Neal Stephenson · 2003 · global

Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World, 2003 to 2004) is a three-volume, near-million-word romp through the dawn of science, finance and the modern world around 1700. Daniel Waterhouse keeps company with Newton and the Royal Society; Jack Shaftoe is dragged in chains from Algiers across the Red Sea, India and the Pacific to Mexico in a treasure-chasing circumnavigation; Eliza conquers the markets of Amsterdam and Versailles. This single eastward circle compresses an immense, many-threaded epic.

1. 1
   London

   Daniel Waterhouse, Puritan son and reluctant natural philosopher, moves among Newton, Hooke and the Royal Society as the modern world is being invented.

2. 2
   Amsterdam

   Eliza, escaped from a Barbary harem, makes herself a power in the Amsterdam markets, trading in shares, secrets and the new machinery of money.

3. 3
   Algiers

   Jack Shaftoe, the half-mad King of the Vagabonds, labours as a galley slave in Algiers, where a desperate scheme is hatched.

4. 4
   Mocha

   A band of slaves seizes a ship and a fortune, running the Red Sea gauntlet past Mocha with a Viceroy's gold.

5. 5
   Surat

   On to the wealth of Hindustan and the ports of the Great Mogul, the treasure dragging them ever further around the world.

6. 6
   Manila

   Across the Indian Ocean to the Spanish Philippines and Manila, edge of the known map.

7. 7
   Acapulco

   And over the Pacific on the galleon track to Mexico, gold chasing gold across an ocean.

8. 8
   London

   Until the long circle closes back in London, at the Tower and the Mint, where Daniel, Isaac and the future of the world's money come to their reckoning.