We are living through what has been described as a “hinge moment in history,” when the future can easily go in drastically different directions. No one knows that better than author Mark Carney, the former Bank of Canada governor who was recently elected federal Liberal leader and simultaneously became the country’s prime minister.
In his timely new book The Hinge: Time to Build an Even Better Canada (McClelland & Stewart), he charts a bold, hopeful and ambitious path through this perilous period. He compares it to the darkest days of the Second World War, when the Allies faced the existential questions that ultimately swung what Winston Churchill called the “Hinge of Fate” toward freedom and prosperity.
Now in 2025 we face another hinge moment: A quarter-century of crises, globalization and technological change has already resulted in plummeting wages, lower quality of life and a loss of trust in our institutions. So how will we deal with the massive disruption to be presented by artificial intelligence and the net zero revolution? According to Carney, this is the time to build for the future with progress in mind.
Money: A Story of Humanity, written by Irish economist David McWilliams, traces the history of money from ancient Babylon along the Silk Road to China and eventually to Wall Street. Along the journey, McWilliams uncovers our relationship with money and how it “has shaped the very essence of what it means to be human.”
There is no better travel companion on this journey than McWilliams, who manages, somehow, to make economics entertaining and even humorous. The professor prides himself on making economic concepts simple without simplifying them. His motto: “What is complicated is rarely important and what is important is rarely complicated.”
McWilliams is a faculty member at Trinity Business School at Trinity College, Dublin. He is also a podcaster and the author of five books.
