This large format, lavishly illustrated book is silk-bound and slip cased. The book examines man’s relations with gold through myth, art, religion, the economy and everyday life. The Gold of the World traces the course followed throughout the world and through the centuries in man’s quest for gold. It begins with the first acquaintance with the precious metal and continues with the search to locate it and the techniques and methods by which it was worked. From the author’s Prologue: ‘This book attempts to trace the course taken by gold in the company of man. An endeavour of this kind does not try to exhaust the evidence, it simply touches on matters, describes them with a few words and leaves the reader to dream of the Conquistadors of Columbus, the gold-diggers of California, the moneychangers of Istanbul in Kapali Çarsi, of Peshawar in Sarapha Bazaar, to dream of the brokers of Wall Street the day of the great crash in 1929, and the miners of the Transvaal the day they found the huge nugget of gold weighing 70 kilos.' Almost 500 colour illustrations cover the place of gold in our lives in every period of human history, from prehistory to the major ancient civilizations and from the America of Conquistadores to the Europe of the great artists.