Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance

I loved this book, read it in 2 weeks. Such a cool combination of facts, from the fertile crescent, to renaissance Italy, to wall street. Looking forward with eco-accounting. Looking smarter years after publication

I found it difficult to read on after the second and third obvious misinformation. I stopped when the author wrote that the original greek texts of greek mathematics only became known in the West after the fall of Constantinople. As if there had not been a constant exchange between Constantinople and the scientists in the West (The texts were accessible in Constantinople as well as in southern Italy and in libraries in Rome). How accurate is the rest of the book? I can only guess.

Double Entry is a wonderful book! It opens up an entirely new world by taking a fresh look at the role of mathematics in economy and the arts in renaissance Venice. Piero della Francesca may have been better known as a mathematician in his days than as an artist. Art was "applied mathematics" at the time! Leonardo, as we know, was everything, yet he too may have been more of a scientist than an artist. Or perhaps, like Piero, Leonardo was also an applied mathematician. Either way, mathematics created many possibilities and the star mathematician was Luca Pacioli, largely forgotten today despite the fact that he did it all, including applying mathematics for effective business and so gave birth to capitalism. The story is told by Jane Gleeson-White with admirable clarity and insight, the influence of Luca Pacioli is with us even today as his system of double book keeping has remained essentially the same over some 5-600 years. Given the influence of mathematics on the arts in the days of Piero, Paciolo and Leonardo, one only regrets that science appears to exerts no influence on today's artists; Feynman even argued that this is reason why artists "are lost, they don't know what to paint because they don't understand how the world works." Understanding the world was the basis for all the fun and excitement that engaged Feyman in his life and by making the reader understand the influence of early mathematics on many aspects of life in Venice, Jane Gleeson-White makes a strong case for her idea that book keeping may turn out to be the most important factor for our possibility to meet some of our most important future challenges, including climate change! It is an extraordinary read, which can be warmly recommended to anyone who wishes to be surprised and delighted.

fascinating and detailed combination of history and business methods, and points the way to a more sustainable process.

Ｅｃｏｎｏｍｉｓｔの推薦図書です。　ルネッサンス時代の簿記について非常に詳しく興味深い本だと思います。