1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin

This book’s full title is 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History – and How it Shattered a Nation. I took this book on my holiday to the Dominican Republic. I found it a very entertaining read. One surprise was that the year over year decline was just over 17% for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The other thing was that buying stock on credit was fine when only a few people were doing it. The problem came when the general public starting to buy stock on credit. That is what made the market soar and also made the market crash.

There is a popular image of brokers leaping from Wall Street windows. When people saw me reading this book, that is what they said. However, that is not what happened. There were apparently no more suicides in 1929 than other years around 1929. Sorkin does focus on the Wall Street players, but he also mentions briefly about the political infighting between Hoover and Roosevelt. Their actions seemed to me to be probably why the Great Depression happened.

This book is fill of characters. He goes into great detail of all the people involved in the market at that time. The book starts off giving a list of all the people involved with the period around 1929. The book is full of stories about these people who were involved. It is very much a character-driven narrative. This is part of the reason it is a great and easy read.

Two other books on this period were recommended. They were Robert Wright, most recently in FDR’s Long New Deal, 2024 and Jim Powell’s FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression.

Martin Pengelly on Guardian has an interesting take. He thinks that Roosevelt saved the day, but a lot of people think otherwise. Devin Scott at Harvard Business Services has an interesting review stating problems with rapid innovation or economic expansion. Liam Byrne on Substack does a superficial review of this book. The one thing he points out and to which I agree was that getting the general public to buy stock on credit was a bad idea. Amity Shlaes on Substack has the best review. She points out the myth of inevitability where a market crash causes a depression. A lot of people agree with her view that it was the efforts of the government that caused the Great Depression.

There is a very short video interview on Andrew Sorkin last just over 1 minute. Katie Couric interviews Andrew Sorkin. He talks about his book, but also has a long discussion on AI. David Remnick at the New Yorker Radio Hour also does an interview. This interview is entitled Andrew Ross Sorkin on What 1929 Teaches Us About 2025. These interviewers are more interested in what Andrew Sorkin think of today rather than what he has said in his book. Amanpour and Co interviews Andrew Ross Sorkin also does an interview. Andrew Sorkin is on Politics and Prose. As with the other interviews, they talk about how 1929 problems and how they relate to current problems. At the 41 minute mark they started to take questions from the audience.

An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.