Beggar Thy Neighbor

"Beggar Thy Neighbor starts with Marcus Junius Brutus, a predatory lender infamous for his role in the assassination of Julius Caesar, ends with the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and provides a lively social-cum-cultural history of debt for the intervening two millennia."—Journal of Economic History

"Geisst tackles this double-edged, troublesome topic not from a personal level-you won't find 10 tips to reduce personal debt here-but from a historical and practical level. He starts from before banks even existed, with a debate that continues today over interest rate ceilings, and it's evident that we are indebted to religious institutions, both Catholic and Jewish, for the foundational practices of money handling, borrowing, loaning, and repaying."—Publishers Weekly

"A useful introduction to the Christian and Muslim disdain for usury and raises important questions about the prevalence of debt in our economy. Geisst proves that legal, moral, and economic debates over usury and debt are here to stay."—The Historian

"Fascinating and comprehensive. . . . The broad historic sweep that [Geisst] brings to this study impresses."—EH.Net

"A compelling book not only for history buffs but also for financial market participants who will find that events today have a long history leading up to our current travails."—Henry Kaufman, author of On Money and Markets: A Wall Street Memoir

"Charles R. Geisst takes us on a splendid tour of the law of usury from ancient times to the present. Along the way one encounters Cicero, Charlemagne, Shakespeare, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Michael Milken and many others in this engaging yet critical account of what may well be the oldest and most ubiquitous form of economic regulation. Highly recommended both for the lay reader interested in economic affairs and the academic specialist in money and banking."—Hugh Rockoff, Rutgers University

"An engaging, comprehensive history of the concept of interest and usury."—Robert Wright, Augustana College, South Dakota