From ancient Babylon to the present, money accompanies the rise and fall of empires, wars and crises, but most of all, the lives of ordinary people. In his work, Doctor of Economic Sciences Sergei Moshensky examines the fate of civilization through the prism of financial relations and comes to the conclusion that the secret of human well-being is not in the amount of accumulated wealth, but in freedom of enterprise, inseparable from personal freedom, and in a responsible attitude towards other members of society. The author covers four thousand years of human history and describes key economic processes and phenomena in a lively and accessible language. The book is addressed to everyone who is interested in finance and the laws of economic development.