Niall Ferguson's The Square and the Tower brilliantly illuminates the great power struggle between networks and hierarchies that is raging around the world today. As a software engineer steeped in the theory and practice of networks, I was deeply impressed by this book's insights. Silicon Valley needed a history lesson and Ferguson has provided it. --Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Alphabet, the parent company of Google

[Ferguson's] typically bold rethinking of historical currents, painted on the broadest canvas, offers many stimulating insights on the tense interplay between order, oppression, freedom, and anarchy.-Publishers Weekly, starred review

Ferguson has written a provocative and intellectually challenging work that should promote consideration and debate among academics and laypersons.-Booklist

Renowned economic historian Ferguson draws on insights from network theory to examine disruptions across time. . . . Refreshingly evenhanded. . . . Ferguson offers a novel way of examining data . . . highly intriguing.-Kirkus

In his sweeping, stimulating and enlightening The Square and the Tower, noted historian Niall Ferguson draws from a wide range of sources to trace the crucial role that different kinds of human networks have played throughout history... Ferguson's superb, thought-provoking book brings these events vividly to life and will help readers view history from a unique perspective.-BookPage