The Greatest Show on Earth

From veteran Financial Times journalist, an epic history of the debt that built the modern world. Long considered the "boring" corner of finance, bonds are anything but. They have funded everything from the Crusades to climate tech, Netflix series to AI data centers. They are now bigger than the stock market and rival even the global banking system in influence. They are also misunderstood—treated as mere debt, when in fact their form, function, and impact are radically different. In A Fabulous Debt, Robin Wigglesworth—The Financial Times’ Global Finance Correspondent, and author of the acclaimed Trillions—offers a sweeping, affectionate history of the bond market. From the dam-builders of 17th-century Holland to the trillion-dollar portfolios of BlackRock, this is a people’s history of finance: rich in drama, full of colorful characters, and bursting with insight. With clarity and wit, Wigglesworth takes readers from medieval Venice to modern Wall Street, tracing how bonds evolved from obscure financial instruments into the invisible architecture of the modern world. Along the way, we meet warlords and water boards, merchant princes and mathematicians, financiers and fraudsters—all of whom helped build the most powerful machine in global finance. This isn’t just a book about the past. It's a guide to the present and future of the financial system—and a love letter to the engine that keeps it running.