The world has always been wild for gold. Gold became synonymous with financial dependability, and following the devastating chaos of World War I, the gold standard came to express the order of the free market system. Warfare in pursuit of wealth required borrowing, and when people lost confidence in the promissory notes and paper currencies issued during wartime, governments again turned to gold. In War and Gold: A Five-Hundred Year History of Empires, Adventures, and Debt, Kwasi Kwarteng exposes a pattern of war-waging and financial debt, from the French Revolution to the emergence of modern-day China.