This entertaining history of the 1929 stock market crash reads like a thriller, even though as readers we know how it is all going to turn out. Sorkin breathes life into his characters; he makes us get caught up in their plight, despite the rapacity and greed of the bankers and stockbrokers and the oblivious befuddlement of the politicians. And there are a lot of players. Sorkin provides almost a dozen pages of the “Cast of Characters and the Companies They Kept” at the beginning of the book, and I found myself referring to it often, especially while reading the first few hundred pages. Still, once you manage to focus on the various protagonists, the story moves relentlessly forward to its tragic denouement.
It is told in two parts. Part one starts a couple of years before the tragic economy-shattering panic of 1929. Bankers and stockbrokers were the celebrities of the era, and they preached a message of prosperity through purchasing stocks on credit. Millions of people around the country fell for their get-rich-quick pontifications, so that when the bubble burst it not only devastated the rich but many middle class and poor households as well. In fact, the wealthy, for the most part, managed to hold on to a sizeable portion of their money, while the smaller players they had coaxed into the game became destitute. The president at the time, Herbert Hoover, maintained a hands-off policy, hoping the situation would correct itself, but all the while it got worse and worse. Part two tells of the aftermath of the crash, the federal investigations that followed, and the popularity and political ascendency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
One thing that struck me as I followed this tumultuous history was the indifference of those responsible. In the upper echelons of the economy, there was no empathy for the little people that were being dragged to their doom in the wake of the big players. It was every man for himself. And in those days, white males were entirely responsible for the debacle. Women were not even allowed onto the stock room floor or into the private meeting rooms of the banking elite. It was a brotherhood of the super-rich, who for the most part scratched each other’s backs, lent each other money, and bought each other’s stocks.
And yes, there are certainly parallels to today, when we have a few people who are rich beyond the dreams of avarice hoarding their wealth on literal or metaphorical islands of solitude, while most of us are floundering in an economy that is becoming increasingly unstable. The specifics of 1929 and the present day are different, of course, but what seems to remain unchanged is the voracity of the few who have no qualms about accumulating unimaginable wealth through the backbreaking labor and traumatic insufficiency of the many.
In conclusion, although there are many characters to keep track of and the plot-twists are based on economics and politics, this is a fast-paced, exciting, and relevant book. Highly recommended.
