Devil's Riches

Jared Poley is Professor of History at Georgia State University. He is author of Decolonization in Germany: Weimar Narratives of Colonial Loss and Foreign Occupation (2005) and a co-editor of the collections Conversion and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Germany (Berghahn, 2012), Migrations in the German Lands, 1500–2000 (Berghahn, 2016), Kinship, Community, and Self (Berghahn, 2014), and Money in the German Speaking Lands (Berghahn, 2017).

“…a thought-provoking study of a subject that is too often taken for granted, rather than subjected to critical examination.” • Financial Times “…a very stimulating, multi-faceted and valuable study of morality, and economics.” • Historische Zeitschrift“Scholarly yet accessible, this is an excellent, much-needed analysis of a subject that is both topical and timeless. Poley focuses on key figures and social forces in well-chosen case studies from throughout modern history, providing a valuable perspective on the last half millennium of globalized capital.” • Douglas McGetchin, Florida Atlantic University

• PrefaceIntroductionChapter 1. Greed and Avarice before AbsolutismChapter 2. The Confessionalization of an EmotionChapter 3. Greed and the Law in the Seventeenth CenturyChapter 4. Greed, Consumerism, and the StateChapter 5. Greed and the Oscillations between Liberalism and SocialismChapter 6. Greed and the New SpiritualismChapter 7. The Psychology and Psychoanalysis of GreedConclusions: Greed and HistoryIndex