1929 (book)

2025 book by Andrew Ross Sorkin 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How It Shattered a Nation 1929 (book) (Book Cover).jpeg Andrew Ross Sorkin United States English Economic history of the United States Viking Press 14 October 2025 592 978-0-593-29696-7 (Hardcover) 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How It Shattered a Nation is a work of narrative financial history written by Andrew Ross Sorkin of the Wall Street crash of 1929, as well as the events leading up to it and its aftermath. The book was first published by Viking Press in 2025. It was a New York Times notable book of 2025Staff The New York Times Books 100 Notable Books of 2025 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/books/notable-books.html The New York Times 15 March 2026 25 November 2025 and made number two on The New York Times Best Seller list.Hardcover Nonfiction Books - Best Sellers - Books - Nov. 2, 2025 - The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/2025/11/02/hardcover-nonfiction/ The New York Times 15 March 2026 Background The book's narrative is chronological and focuses on selected dates in a four-year period, starting with February 1, 1929, about seven months before the start of the crash. The crash started on the New York Stock Exchange, commonly referred to as ‘Wall Street’, after the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached an all-time closing high of 381.17 on September 3, 1929. The Wall Street crash of 1929 John Kenneth Galbraith The Great Crash, 1929 Mariner Books 978-0-395-85999-5 001–206 1997 ended the great bull market Rober Sobell The Great Bull Market : Wall Street in the 1920s W. W. Norton and Company 978-0-393-09817-4 001–175 1968 and the Roaring Twenties Lucy Moore Anything Goes: A Biography of the Roaring Twenties Overlook Press 978-1-59020-313-2 001–352 2010 and precipitated the Great Depression in the United States. The final chapter describes events of June 21, 1933, which roughly coincides with the middle of the Great Depression and the start of the recovery of the stock market. The players in this drama are bankers, business leaders, economists, journalists, speculators and officials of the New York Stock Exchange, the US government and the Federal Reserve. Sorkin notes that he spent eight years researching and writing the bookhttps://www.cato.org/blog/sorkins-1929-critique 2026-09-05 www.cato.org Sorkin’s 1929: A Critique February 3, 2026 Dorn James live and achieved an oeuvre with approximately one hundred pages of notes and references, many not previously published or analyzed. The book also contains a substantive index and a section entitled, ‘The Cast of Characters and the Companies they Kept,’ which lists the affiliations of the major characters in the book. Synopsis Financial institutions The book describes the widespread optimism surrounding rising stock prices among investors, public figures, government officials, and especially bankers.UK The Week 2025-10-23 1929: ‘work of true scholarship’ offers insight into devastating Wall Street crash https://theweek.com/culture-life/books/1929-andrew-ross-sorkin-review 2026-07-09 The Week en It also discusses the extensive use of call money loans by banks, which enabled investors to purchase stocks on margins as low as ten percent.Richardson Gary Stock Market Crash of 1929 https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/stock-market-crash-of-1929 2026-07-09 www.federalreservehistory.org en The actions of Charles Edwin Mitchell,"Damnation of Mitchell". Time. March 6, 1933. Chairman and CEO of National City Bank and Thomas William Lamont Corliss Lamont The Thomas Lamonts in America A. S. Barnes 0-498-07882-5 001–255 1971 of the House of Morgan are detailed.1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin — the hubris behind the Wall St crash https://www.ft.com/content/a585a411-3060-4f55-bfa5-1b2867958bfd https://web.archive.org/web/20260226205837/https://www.ft.com/content/a585a411-3060-4f55-bfa5-1b2867958bfd 2026-02-26 2026-07-09 www.ft.com en-GB According to Sorkin, these bankers had too much at stake to contemplate anything other than optimistic scenarios for stocks. Speculators William Crapo Durant Bernard Weissberger The Dream Maker: William C. Durant, Founder of General Motors Little, Brown and Company 978-0-316-92874-8 001–396 1979 was on the leading edge among Wall Street insiders on a trendy financial stratagem, the "stock pool." Wealthy investors would pool their assets to purchase stock in a target company. They would then inflate the stock price by judicious trades within the group, and typically leak information to the press that a bullish operation was in progress to entice small investors to ride the coat-tails of the pool operators. At the height of the excitement, they would dump their shares at peak prices.Mahoney Paul 1999 The stock pools and the Securities Exchange Act Journal of Financial Economics 51 3 343-369 One notable exception among speculators was Jesse Livermore, Tom Rubython Jesse Livermore – Boy Plunger: The Man Who Sold America Short in 1929 The Myrtle Press 978-0-9906199-1-8 001–400 2015 who stated to a reporter at The New York Times that the market was overpriced and stocks were at "ridiculously high prices."Times Special to The New York 1929-10-22 WASHINGTON VIEWS SITUATION AS SOUND; Officials Hold That Decline in Stocks Will Not Disturb Business Materially. RESERVE POSITION STRONG observers Discuss Possible Effect of Cut in Rediscount Rate, but No Action Is Forecast. BANKERS PREDICT A RALLY. Believe Reaction Has Gong Too Far and See No Cause for Alarm. LIVERMORE NOT IN BEAR POOL Says It Is Foolish to Think That Any One Group Can Sway Market. https://www.nytimes.com/1929/10/22/archives/washington-views-situation-as-sound-officials-hold-that-decline-in.html 2026-09-08 The New York Times en-US 0362-4331 Jesse Livermore’s assessment of the stock market proved correct and by the end of October of 1929 Livermore had made $100 million on the short side of the market, that is, betting on stock prices to fall.Shen Lucinda Why Wall Street traders are obsessed with Jesse Livermore https://www.businessinsider.com/the-life-of-jesse-livermore-2015-7 2026-09-08 Business Insider en-US The Federal Reserve President Herbert Hoover was concerned about rampant stock market speculation, and urged the Federal Reserve to restrict credit. The Federal Reserve, however, remained cautious about raising rates in fear of triggering widespread panic. Kenneth Whyte Hoover: An Extraordinary Life In Extraordinary Times Knopf Publishing 978-0-307-59796-0 001–752 2017 Economist Roger Babson's warning on September 5, 1929 that "sooner or later a crash is coming, and it may be terrific" preceded a sharp market decline, one of the many factors contributing to the crash. Critical reception There has been enthusiastic praise for the book,Mark Mansour https://calirb.com/1929-inside-the-greatest-crash-in-wall-street-history-and-how-it-shattered-a-nation-by-andrew-ross-sorkin/ 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History – And How It Shattered a Nation – by Andrew Ross Sorkin California Review of Books 2026-01-30 2026-02-01 as well as critical reviews suggesting that Sorkin spent a significant portion of the narrative covering the lifestyles of the rich and famous, while his thesis that the bifurcation of society into rich and poor was causal to the crash was unproven. Amity Shalaes https://www.coolidgereview.com/articles/1929-crash-sorkin 1929: Sorkin Rounds Up The Usual Suspects Coolidge Review 2025-12-04 2026-02-01 A strident review by The New York Times suggests that Sorkin’s halfhearted defense of the 1929 bankers is an indictment of the system he claims to love, while the little guy lost everything in a festival of fraud and theft for the titans. Zachary Carter https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/books/review/1929-andrew-ross-sorkin.html 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History – And How It Shattered a Nation – by Andrew Ross Sorkin The New York Times 2025-11-25 2026-02-02 Economist James A. Dorn, writing for the Cato Institute, praised Sorkin’s depth of research, but criticized him for neglecting monetary policy in explaining causes of the crash. He argues Sorkin has overlooked the Federal Reserve’s role and the contraction of the money supply, and instead has favored a narrative focusing on speculation, human nature, and irrational exuberance. See also List of economic crises References Category:2025 non-fiction books Category:2025 English-language non-fiction books Category:2025 in economic history Category:Economic history of the United States Category:Wall Street crash of 1929 Category:American history books