A world of new and rapidly developing technology. A world of innovations in finance, not to mention disastrous bubbles. A world in which saying or believing in the wrong thing can lose you your livelihood or even your life. A world in which beggars line the streets and employers cannot find enough workers.Sound familiar?This is the world which gave birth to modern capitalism.Sombart takes us on a journey through the epoch of early capitalism, exploring the factors that influenced its development, from the development of a demand for luxury goods by French courtesans, to the demand for weapons and uniforms for the new standing armies, to the use of colonisation for creating the demand for and the supply of goods, to the creation of the 'worker' as something different from the craftsman and the entrepreneur as an entirely new phenomenon.