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BOOK REVIEW
local association news The Agora network goes from strength to strength 1. EGYPT Late last year, DBS staff Anne Woodhead and Dr Riham Rizk, visited Cairo to represent the School at an MBA recruitment fair. After the successful event they met with a group of alumni for dinner at ‘Tabouleh’ restaurant. Also in attendance was ex-DBS staff member Professor David Kirby who is now Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration, Economics and Politics at the British University in Egypt and manager of Audience Relations at the British Council.
2. HONG KONG Hong Kong Agora met for a Christmas reunion dinner at the City University of Hong Kong. Fifteen alumni attended and, as usual, the event was expertly organised by Eddie Yu and his colleagues. In February the group hosted another event at Dublin Jack’s Irish bar in Hong Kong, when Alexandra Sedgwick, DBS Alumni Relations Manager, joined them for dinner.
3. LONDON
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Southern Agora is as always a very active group. They met for dinner on 10 December for a Christmas celebration at Wong Kei’s and then afterwards at De Hems Bar for drinks. Thank you to Dionysia Patrinou who organised this event in the absence of group leader Nikhil Kulkarni.
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson
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4. UNITED ARAB EMIRATES United Arab Emirates continue their wonderful work and are currently organising an alumni ‘yearbook’ in which the group members are providing articles, updates, photographs and much more. The group has been holding regular meetings to keep this initiative going forward, and we wish them great success with it.
Colin Theakston, Durham Business School’s Librarian, shares with us his view on this recent publication.
Local Associations are the perfect way to join in the DBS Global Get Together events. Forthcoming dates include: 11 June, 10 September and 10 December. We particularly look forward to hearing about your events and receiving photographs.
Niall Ferguson is a British historian of some considerable note. He is a History Professor at Harvard University, and if that isn’t enough, he is also the William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is the author of such books as Inside the House of Money: Top Hedge Fund Traders on Profiting in the Global Markets; The Cash Nexus: Money and Politics in Modern History and the book we are discussing today The Ascent of Money. This book is both a top selling economic history text (yes, such things do exist) AND a successful television series, for those of you who watch the UK television station Channel 4. What I particularly like in this book is Ferguson’s sweep through the
civilisations of the past; telling the reader many fascinating facts, such as that the Incas spurned the use of gold and silver as money, or that preChristian Babylonia produced credit notes in the form of clay tablets, and other details concerning the development of various civilisations’ attitudes towards money and finance. This is an excellent broad history of our financial system, especially of interest when covering such topics as the development of bond and stock markets; the West’s obsession with property and many cautionary tales from history of boom and bust. What makes this book such a good read is its linking of historical events to our current recessionary predicament – both as an example of how things have gone wrong before and as direct causes of the latest credit crunch.
COMPETITION 3
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For your chance to win a copy of the book visit: www.agora.org.uk select ‘news’ and follow the competition links. Closing date: 30 April 2010