There are 17 ingredients in a typical tube of toothpaste, from titanium dioxide to xanthan gum, and that doesn't include the tube. They all come from somewhere and someone had to bring them all together. The most humble household product reveals a network of entrepreneurship that spans the globe.

"More" is the story of how this network was created. It begins with the earliest signs of long-term trade—the obsidian blades that ended up from modern-day Turkey to the Iran-Iraq border 7,000 years before Christ—and ends with the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. On this grand scale, the peculiarities of historical perspective emerge: futures contracts and branding are among the many seemingly modern components of the global economy that existed since antiquity. However, it was only in the 18th century that a storm of innovations began to permanently increase prosperity across the world.

To weave this gripping narrative, Philip Coggan takes the reader to medieval huts and state-of-the-art hydroponic farms, prehistoric Chinese burial mounds, and modern central banks. At every step of our journey, he finds that the connections between people created our wealth. Will the same openness continue to serve us in the 21st century?

Pages: 480, Year of Publication: 0107, Dimensions: 12.8x12.8cm