Spring Book Read Continues
Dakota College at Bottineau continues the Campus Read program through spring semester, 2022. January 11th kicks off the semester with the first gathering.
The book Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing by Jacob Goldstein will be discussed with the group at 7:00 pm in the Centennial Alumni Center located on second floor of Thatcher Hall. Everyone is invited to attend whether they have read some or all of the book. Participation is available from a location off campus, by contacting Dr. Gary Albrightson; gary.albrightson@dakotacollege.edu to receive the link to connect.
Money only works because we all agree to believe in it. In Money, Jacob Goldstein shows how money is a useful fiction that has shaped societies for thousands of years, from the rise of coins in ancient Greece to the first stock market in Amsterdam to the emergence of shadow banking in the 21st century.
At the heart of the story are the fringe thinkers and world leaders who reimagined money. Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor, created paper money backed by nothing, centuries before it appeared in the west. John Law, a professional gambler and convicted murderer, brought modern money to France (and destroyed the country's economy). The cypherpunks, a group of radical libertarian computer programmers, paved the way for bitcoin.
One thing they all realized: what counts as money (and what doesn't) is the result of choices we make, and those choices have a profound effect on who gets more stuff and who gets less, who gets to take risks when times are good, and who gets screwed when things go bad.
Lively, accessible, and full of interesting details (like the 43-pound copper coins that 17th-century Swedes carried strapped to their backs), Money is the story of the choices that gave us money as we know it today.
The co-host of the popular NPR podcast Planet Money provides a well-researched, entertaining, somewhat irreverent look at how money is a made-up thing that has evolved over time to suit humanity's changing needs.
Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50358103-money?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=1GJ9YEVgrQ&rank=2
February and March reads have been determined with April to be decided. All Book Read discussions will be held in the Centennial Alumni Center with an off-campus participation also available.
February 8 - The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson March 8 – Caste: The origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson April 12 -To be decided May 10 - To be decided
Dr. Albrightson encourages folks to attend whether they have read some or all of the book. The book read group meets monthly at 7:00 pm on second floor of Thatcher Hall on Dakota College campus. Participation is available from a location off campus, by contacting Dr. Gary Albrightson; gary.albrightson@dakotacollege.edu to receive the link to connect.