The Book of Wealth is a much sought-after book written by Hubert Howe Bancroft, the first volume was published in 1896. The book details the wealth of historic figures and dynasties dating from ancient times up to 1896. It was written to be the companion book to The Book of the Fair and took about six years to complete. It is an inquiry into the nature and distribution of the world’s resources and riches, and a history of the origin and influence of property, its possession, accumulation, and disposition in all ages and among all nations, as a factor in human accomplishment, an agency of human refinement, and in the evolution of civilization from the earliest to the present era. The focus of the book is a study of wealth in relation to material and intellectual progress and achievement. This is an OCR (optical character recognition) version of the physical book. The original books were 17" x 22", bound in heavy golden silk, lined with white decorative fabric, and contain about 3,000 images consisting of original watercolors and engravings. The book also contained 100 paintings by popular artist such as Thomas Moran, G. H. McCord, W. Granville Smith, C. Y. Turner, C. A. Vanderhoff, E. Benvenuto. The cover of each section of the first edition displayed an original water-color by a well-known artist. This ebook does not contain any of the images that were included in the physical books. The books are divided into ten volumes (sections) and twenty-nine chapters. The book starts by detailing the nations of antiquity, starting with the oldest, and then moving to the next, and the next, until it finishes with the United States. The chapters are divided as follows: 1. Chaldea, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia 2. Egypt, Phoenicia 3. Palestine, Arabia 4. India, China, Japan 5. Central and Southeastern Asia 6. Greece 7. Italy 8. Spain, Portugal 9. The Turkish Empire 10. France, Switzerland 11. Belgium, Holland 12. The Austro-Hungarian Empire 13. Germany 14. Denmark, Norway, Sweden 15. Russia 16. Great Britain and Ireland 17. Africa 18. Australia, The Hawaiian Islands 19. South America 20. Central America, West India Islands 21. Mexico 22. Canada 23. Pacific United States 24. Rocky Mountain States 25. Midcontinent States 26. Southern States 27. Central Lake States 28. New England States 29. Middle Atlantic States There is also a section on art and architecture that is divided as follows: 1. The Wealth of Art and the Art of Wealth 2. Origin, Scope, and Development of Art 3. Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia 4. India, China, and Japan 5. Classic Era—Greece 6. The Classic Era—Italy 7. Early Christian and Byzantine Period 8. Islam and Its Monuments 9. The Romanesque and the Gothic