Ed Conway
Ed Conway
Ed Conway is a writer and broadcaster. He is the Economics and Data Editor of Sky News and a regular columnist for The Times and Sunday Times. He has written two critically acclaimed and bestselling books and has won numerous awards for his journalism, including the Wincott Foundation Journalist of the Year Award – the most prestigious award in British financial journalism.
Ed studied at Pembroke College, Oxford and the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, where he was a Fulbright scholar and a Shorenstein Scholar. He lives in London.
Books
Trade World: The Ties That Bound Our Past and Could Unravel Our Future
Rights
Endorsements
There are good reporters, and smart thinkers, and sharp writers - but Ed Conway is all three at once... A superb guide to the way the world economy sustains and frustrates us, and it's full of telling details and provocative ideas
Reading Trade World is an exercise in revelation, an education in the secret story behind a countless array of connections and products and companies we take for granted, and above all an urgent call to get serious about reducing our vulnerabilities and optimising our future. Ed is not just a masterful explainer of hard problems, but the master. This is my book of the year, unless he writes another one; and merely the latest proof that Ed Conway is the most important - and best - journalist in Britain right now
Ed Conway is our age’s master in the art of explaining, in simple, clear and engaging language, the building blocks on which our whole civilisation rests
With Trade World, Ed Conway illuminates the vast extent of our mutual economic dependence in the global trading system. With fascinating accounts of how three basic products - bread, clothes and cars - are made, this compelling book stands as a warning about how damaging it will be if these links through trade are unwound
Ed Conway is opening up a whole new way of looking at how the world works ... Essential and gripping reading. A much needed and erudite warning for our era of Donald Trump's tariff threats and growing protectionism elsewhere
Conway has a serious message to get across, but the process is so enjoyable you barely notice it happening
Synopsis
From the award-winning and Sunday Timesbestselling author of Material World, a story that will take you from ancient civilizations, empire and globalisation through to the most influential geopolitical issue of our times.
The story of trade is the story of humanity. From the copper in Mesopotamian ploughs to the silicon atoms within the chip inside your smartphone, intricate global trading networks have evolved over millennia to fulfil the distinctly human desire to buy and sell.
Today, the volume of trade bestriding the planet is unprecedented. Yet, as fractures in the global order emerge – from an era of globalisation and untrammelled flows of goods and money to a new world of restrictions, intervention and, possibly, war – understanding this fundamental shift to the dominant economic consensus is more important than ever.
Ed Conway tells this extraordinary story through these three commonplace products – bread, cloth and cars. With a compelling blend of economic history and first-hand access to key figures and institutions, he takes us from policy treaties to ground level to show us the people who make, ship and sometimes smuggle the products we buy on a daily basis.
Discover the hidden, shifting trade world behind everything you see around you.
Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future
Rights
Endorsements
A compelling narrative of the human story
Lively, rich and exciting... full of surprises. Underlines that to understand global geopolitics, you need to understand natural resources and geology
Expansive, erudite, and edifying. A stunning insight into the materials that shaped our history and built the modern world
Fascinating, fun, and vitally important. A wonderful exploration of the world we've built yet somehow manage to ignore
A stunning book that will transform the way you think about economics and life. Brilliantly written
In Material World, Ed Conway uncovers the hidden history of the materials that structure our world. Full of colourful characters and fascinating connections, Material World shows how the seemingly simplest materials - from sand to salt to iron - require unbelievably complex refining and processing before arriving at their final form. Absorbing storytelling... Fascinating and insightful
Conway's gripping explanation of a world you didn't know needed explaining deserves this highest of accolades: Material World, once read, leaves us baffled that nobody ever thought of writing it before
Ed Conway is a great thinker... Material World is an engrossing study of the basic substances on which we all depend. Anyone who cares about the resources which built our world and where mankind is heading must read this vital book
A masterful exploration of how materials shape our world more than ever - economically, geopolitically and environmentally
A highly engaging and important look at the key materials powering our modern world, and how we feed our insatiable appetite for them
Fascinating and forensic in equal measure... reveals the web of mining and manufacturing that underpins the lives of everyone on the planet
Synopsis
Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium. They built our world, and they will transform our future.
These are the six most crucial substances in human history. They took us from the Dark Ages to the present day. They power our computers and phones, build our homes and offices, and create life-saving medicines. But most of us take them completely for granted.
In Material World, Ed Conway travels the globe - from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe, to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan, to the eerie green pools where lithium originates - to uncover a secret world we rarely see. Revealing the true marvel of these substances, he follows the mind-boggling journeys, miraculous processes and little-known companies that turn the raw materials we all need into products of astonishing complexity.
As we wrestle with climate change, energy crises and the threat of new global conflict, Conway shows why these substances matter more than ever before, and how the hidden battle to control them will shape our geopolitical future. This is the story of civilisation - our ambitions and glory, innovations and appetites - from a new perspective: literally from the ground up.
The Summit: The Biggest Battle of the Second World War - fought behind closed doors
Rights
Endorsements
Brimming with the sort of vivid details that make the past come alive, The Summit is both an impressive work of scholarship and an absolute delight to read
What makes Conway's account distinctive is that it is such good fun... his jolly, colourful account makes a perfect introduction to one of the most important meetings of the past century
History with scholarship and verve... This is a ripe, resounding story, brilliantly told
Keynes's charisma and wit enliven the excellent narrative of Ed Conway
As a case study in how to wrangle diplomats and politicians, Bretton Woods is without peer and it is harder to imagine a book that better shows why than The Summit
An entertaining and insightful history. Readers will love how Conway skillfully brings to life the goings-on in what the British snobbily called 'the monstrous monkey house' of Bretton Woods
Utterly absorbing, minutely researched . . . The picture so gloriously painted here is of a three-week, intellect-sapping, emotionally-draining roller-coaster
Who would have thought that an account of an economic summit could be so absorbing? But it was no ordinary summit and Ed Conway's is an exceptional account
Synopsis
The idea of world leaders gathering in the midst of economic crisis has become all too familiar. But the meeting at Bretton Woods in 1944 was different. It was the only time countries from around the world have agreed to overhaul the structure of the international monetary system. Against all odds, they were successful. The system they set up presided over the longest, strongest and most stable period of growth the world economy has ever seen. Its demise some decades later was at least partly responsible for the periodic economic crises that culminated in the financial collapse of the 2000s.
But what everyone has always assumed to be a dry economic conference was in fact replete with drama. The delegates spent half the time at each other's throats and the other half drinking in the hotel bar. The Russians nearly capsized the entire project. The French threatened to walk out, repeatedly. All the while war in Europe raged on.
At the very heart of the conference was the love-hate relationship between the Briton John Maynard Keynes, the greatest economist of his day, who suffered a heart attack at the conference itself and who was a true worldwide celebrity - and his American counterpart Harry Dexter White (later revealed to be passing information secretly to Russian spies). Both were intent on creating an economic settlement which would put right the wrongs of Versailles. Both were working to prevent a World War Three. But they were also working to defend their countries' national interests.
Drawing on a wealth of unpublished accounts, diaries and oral histories, this brilliant book describes the conference in stunning colour and clarity. Bringing to life the characters, events and economics and written with exceptional verve and narrative pace, this is an extraordinary debut from a talented new writer.
