1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in History – and How It Shattered a Nation
by Andrew Ross Sorkin
View on GoodreadsOn October 28, 1929, the market fell about 13 percent, and National City Bank found itself holding some 71,000 shares from a failed deal. Sorkin rebuilds the crash almost hour by hour through June 1933, and you're in the rooms with the bankers, speculators, Fed officials and politicians.
Core ideas
- Pools and margin: Legal stock pools let insiders secretly lift prices to lure small investors, and margin buying fed the mania.
- Self-dealing at the top: Chase's Albert Wiggin shorted his own bank's stock for about $4 million in profit, and NYSE president Richard Whitney misappropriated securities.
- Mitchell at the center: National City's Charles Mitchell, arrested for tax evasion in 1933, isn't a simple villain here, though an EH.net reviewer finds Sorkin too sympathetic to bankers.
Published2025
Pages577
ISBN9780241479421
ReadOct 2025
