The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs
By Charles D Ellis
Allen Lane £25, 729 pages
FT Bookshop price: £20

At various points in history, the game changes and the paradigm shifts: it happened to the city of Constantinople in 1453, unprepared for the siege guns of Mehmet II; it happened to the old Russian navy, relying on flagged signals outstripped by Marconi radio and faster Japanese ships at Tsushima in 1905; and it is happening now across our financial markets.