When an American explorer named William Henry Furness III arrived on the remote Pacific island of Yap at the start of the last century, he found a scarcely touched place that made his previous destination of Borneo look almost developed.
MONEY: The Unauthorised Biography, by Felix Martin. Bodley Head, 2013, 336 pp., £20 (hardcover)
Yet despite having only a few thousand inhabitants and a market encompassing just three products — fish, coconuts and sea cucumber — he was amazed to discover an advanced system of money.