Trade with All Nations: I Propelled the Great Ming to the Top of the World

A bankrupt CEO jumps into a river, only to become a condemned prisoner in the Ming Dynasty of 1572. He saves his life with glass buttons and stays alive by melting silver bricks. In just 60 days, he stakes 50,000 taels of silver on the frozen Forbidden City, and turns “sugar, rice, silk, and iron” into global hard currency. From Yuegang to Amsterdam, he uses data to outclass Western fleets, uses bonds to disperse mutinous troops and stop the skinning alive of prisoners, and, in the vacuum left by the suspension of silver supplies, turns capital into a new flag over an empire on which the sun never sets.