Best Seller Book Lists and Awards

  • Council on Foreign Relations' Arthur Ross Book Award, September 2011.
  • Independent Publisher Book Awards in Finance/Economics 2010.

  • Paul A. Samuelson Award, TIAA-CREF Institute Award, 2010.

  • An 800-CEO-READ "Business Books Awards 2009" finalist ("Best of the Rest") in the Current Interest Category
  • One of USA Today's "Year's Best Business Books To Make Sense of Financial Crisis"
  • Listed on Bloomberg.com by James Pressley as one of "our favorite financial-crisis books this year"
  • Shortlisted for the 2010 Financial History of the Year by Spear's Book Awards.
  • Runner Up on The Atlantic "Books of the Year" list
  • Listed as one of the Top Ten English Business Books of 2009 in WirtschaftsBlatt

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Full Dataset to All Figures and Tables in the Book

Figures and tables are fully annotated with detailed sources.

A Visual History of Financial Crises, 1800-2010

This graphic by History Shots is based on the data developed in the book, it maps the cyclical history of financial crisis from 1810 to 2010 for sixty-six countries representing over 90% of world GDP.

    "Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing -- and recovering -- their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, 'this time is different', claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters."

The giant wave in the top section of the graphic depicts the percentage of world GDP by region in crisis during the 200 year period. It includes the four major financial crisis types (sovereign default, banking, currency, and inflation) along with stock market crashes.

The bottom section provides a detailed chart of all sovereign defaults by country, region and year. It shows the repeating nature of sovereign default, a central theme of the book.

Created in partnership with the Princeton University Press, this graphic provides a comprehensive yet accessible view into the historical and current cycles of financial crises.

 

This print is printed on high-quality, fine-art paper.

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Book Reviews and Endorsements

"The four most dangerous words in finance are 'this time is different.' Thanks to this masterpiece by Carmen Reinhart at the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard, no one can doubt this again. . . . The authors have put an immense amount of work into collecting the data financial institutions needed if they were to have any chance of making quantitative risk management work."
- Martin Wolf Financial Times, September 28, 2009 
"This is quite simply the best empirical investigation of financial crises ever published. Covering hundreds of years and bringing together a dizzying array of data, Reinhart and Rogoff have made a truly heroic contribution to financial history. This single marvelous volume is worth a thousand mathematical models."
- Niall Ferguson, author of The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

"This Time is Different is terrific, for it gives just the perspective we need on the current world economic crisis. People can't expect to understand the current crisis without some in-depth look at past crises. That is exactly what this excellent and timely book provides."
- Robert J. Shiller, author of Irrational Exuberance and coauthor of Animal Spirits

"The research that went into this book has established Reinhart and Rogoff as leading authorities on crises, routinely cited by policymakers, academics and journalists (including me). Everyone working on economic policy should own "This Time is Different" and open it for a bracing blast of sobriety when things seem to be going well."
- Greg Ip, Washington Post, October 25, 2009 
"This Time Is Different is a splendid book. One has to go back a long time to find another book that develops new data and that illuminates old problems in new ways. Burns and Mitchell\'s work at the National Bureau comes to mind."
- Allan H. Meltzer, author of the two-volume History of the Federal Reserve, AEI Book Forum, October 29, 2009
"The list reminds one of Cole Porter. Moroccans do it and Greeks do it, Thais do it and Koreans do it. Some Argentines without means do it. Even Finns, Brits, Yanks and Swedes do it.--No, I'm not talking about falling in love.
As "This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly," a valuable new book by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, makes clear, what these and dozens of other nations do is produce financial crises that devastate their own economies. Moreover, they explain, we are somewhere in the middle of a big such crisis right now, and it is far from clear how it will play out before it is all over."
- Idaho Statesman, Edward Lotterman, November 2, 2009

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