Tim Harford is a senior columnist for the Financial Times and the presenter of Radio 4's More or Less. He was the winner of the Bastiat Prize for economic journalism in 2006, and More or Less was commended for excellence in journalism by the Royal Statistical Society in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Harford lives in Oxford with his wife and three children, and is a visiting fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. His other books include The Undercover Economist, The Logic of Life and Adapt.

A Financial Times and Bloomberg Business Week Book of the Year

'Constantly surprising. It brims with innovations I didn't know about, as well as ones I thought I knew about but did not' The Times
From the tally-stick to Bitcoin, the canal lock to the jumbo jet, each invention in Tim Harford's fascinating new book has its own curious, surprising and memorable story, a vignette against a grand backdrop. Step by step, readers will start to understand where we are, how we got here, and where we might be going next.
'Packed with fascinating detail . . . Harford has an engagingly wry style and his book is a superb introduction to some of the most vital products of human ingenuity' Sunday Times
'Harford's richness of detail bespeaks skill both as an economic analyst and as a popular commentator. His sections on barbed wire, passports, the contraceptive pill, infant formula, the bar code and even that IKEA staple, the Billy bookcase, are well researched, racily written and genuinely thought-provoking . . . This is an entertaining book that might distract you from your gramophone for more than an evening and will find a secure place beside Harford's other books on your Billy bookcase' Times Literary Supplement