Liaquat Ahamed
Liaquat Ahamed graduated with degrees in economics from Cambridge and Harvard, worked at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and had a twenty-five-year career as a professional investment manager based in London and New York before turning to writing. His first book, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, about the lead up to the 1929 Great Depression, won the Pulitzer Prize for History, the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Gold Medal, and the Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year Award. He is a trustee of the Putnam Funds, an adviser to the Rock Creek Group, and the Chair of the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference. He lives in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. with his wife, Meena.
Liaquat Ahamed’s latest book, 1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World, is named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by Literary Hub. 1873 is a magnificent and timely reckoning with the first truly global financial calamity and the famous banking family at its helm. The Rothschilds and a cast of other witnesses give us the human perspective. And we have a brilliant financial historian’s grasp of the larger forces at play, resulting in a global narrative with thrilling explanatory power.