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