Book of the day: Double Entry by Jane Gleeson-White
On 18 March 1968, three months before an assassin’s bullet cut short his life, Senator Robert F. Kennedy made an impassioned speech at the University of Kansas. He spoke about the health of his nation, the economic powerhouse that is the United States of America, and the way we measure national wealth using figures such as the Gross National Product (GNP). Kennedy said:
Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion a year, but that Gross National Product—if we judge the United States of America by that—that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
Cover blurb
Our world is governed by the numbers generated by the accounts of nations and corporations. We depend on these numbers to direct our governments, our institutions, corporations, economies, societies. But where did they come from and how did they become so powerful?
The answer to these questions begins in the Dark Ages in northern Italy with a new form of record keeping perfected by the merchants of Venice called double-entry bookkeeping. The story of double entry stars a Renaissance monk, mathematician, magician and constant companion of Leonardo da Vinci, his 27-page treatise for merchants, renaissances in art and mathematics, and revolutions in communications and industry.
The rise and metamorphosis of double-entry bookkeeping is one of history’s best-kept secrets and one of its most important untold tales. Why? First, because it made possible the wealth and cultural efflorescence that was the Renaissance. Second, because it enabled capitalism to flourish, so changing the economies of the world forever. Third, because over several centuries it grew into a sophisticated system of numbers which in the twenty-first century governs the global economy. And finally, and most significantly, because today bookkeeping has the potential to make or break the planet.
As Guardian journalist Jonathan Watts wrote in October 2010: ‘So it has come to this. The global biodiversity crisis is so severe that brilliant scientists, political leaders, eco-warriors, and religious gurus can no longer save us from ourselves. The military are powerless. But there may be one last hope for life on earth: accountants.’
