{"id":141830,"date":"2025-10-24T02:42:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T02:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/141830\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T02:42:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T02:42:15","slug":"1929-work-of-true-scholarship-offers-insight-into-devastating-wall-street-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/141830\/","title":{"rendered":"1929: \u2018work of true scholarship\u2019 offers insight into devastating Wall Street crash"},"content":{"rendered":"

With \u201cToo Big to Fail\u201d, Andrew Ross Sorkin \u201cdefined the story of the 2008 financial crisis\u201d, said Pratinav Anil in The Times<\/a>. Now he has turned his gaze to an \u201cearlier frenzy of leverage and illusion\u201d: the Wall Street crash of 1929.<\/p>\n

In the 1920s, with liquor outlawed, speculation became America\u2019s \u201clegal intoxication\u201d. Financial regulation was lax \u2013 \u201cinsider trading was not a crime but a craft\u201d \u2013 and debt was the \u201cnew gospel\u201d. Key to Sorkin\u2019s \u201cblow-by-blow\u201d account is a \u201cgallery of finely drawn pen portraits\u201d. We meet the \u201cwhip-smart\u201d trader Jesse Livermore, who made \u201cpots of money\u201d shorting the market on 24 October \u2013 \u201cBlack Thursday\u201d \u2013 only to \u201close it all betting against the recovery\u201d; the \u201cfolksy Southern Democrat<\/a>\u201d Carter Glass, the \u201cpresiding spirit behind\u201d the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act; and even Winston Churchill, who was visiting New York in October 1929 and saw a man fling himself from his hotel window. If Sorkin\u2019s concern for human drama makes his book seem superficial at times \u2013 he largely steers clear of \u201ccomplicated explanations\u201d \u2013 it is nonetheless \u201cpacy\u201d and enjoyable.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It certainly delivers plenty of \u201ctrue-crime thrills\u201d, said Zachary D. Carter in The New York Times<\/a>. We learn all about the \u201coutrageous pump-and-dump schemes\u201d, in which bankers sold stocks to one another at inflated prices, encouraging speculators to \u201cpile on\u201d, before selling out and leaving the \u201csuckers holding the bag\u201d. There\u2019s New York Stock Exchange president Richard Whitney, who extolled his employer as a \u201cperfect institution\u201d, while embezzling \u201cmore than $1m of securities to fund a life of country estate fox hunting\u201d. Inevitably, Sorkin\u2019s cast is \u201calmost all-male\u201d, said Piers Brendon in Literary Review<\/a>, but there\u2019s one entertaining exception. Evangeline Adam, an astrologer, \u201cmade a mint\u201d advising Charlie Chaplin and others to buy shares based on their zodiac signs, but lost $100,000 on Black Thursday.<\/p>\n

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Sorkin doesn\u2019t neglect the \u201cugly aftermath\u201d of the crash, when \u201cpanic moved from Wall Street to Main Street\u201d, said Andy Haldane in the Financial Times<\/a>. He documents the slide into the Great Depression of the 1930s, when unemployment rose above eight million and shanty towns, nicknamed \u201cHoovervilles\u201d (after President Herbert Hoover), sprang up across America. The product of eight years of meticulous research, this book is a \u201cwork of true scholarship\u201d. \u201cA people\u2019s tragedy told through the lens of the leading players\u201d, it is sure to be considered one of the best books in the \u201cGreat Crash\/Depression genre\u201d.<\/p>\n

A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day \u2013 and the best features from TheWeek.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With \u201cToo Big to Fail\u201d, Andrew Ross Sorkin \u201cdefined the story of the 2008 financial crisis\u201d, said Pratinav…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[359,18,117,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-141830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115426842718865992","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}