Stock Market Crash of 1929
The Roaring Twenties came to an end in October 1929 when the stock market crashed. These nonfiction books explore this event in American history, while the novels use it for literary impact and setting.
Nonfiction
Rainbow's End: The Crash of 1929
By Maury Klein
This compulsively readable history of the stock market crash of 1929 is written by a business historian. Rainbow's End tells the story of the stock market collapse in a colorful, swift-moving narrative that blends a vivid portrait of the 1920s with an intensely gripping account of Wall Street's greatest catastrophe. The book offers a vibrant picture of a world full of plungers, powerful bankers, corporate titans, millionaire brokers, and buoyantly optimistic stock market bulls.
The Great Crash, 1929
By John Kenneth Galbraith
Of Galbraith's classic examination of the 1929 financial collapse, the Atlantic Monthly said: "Economic writings are seldom notable for their entertainment value, but this book is. Galbraith's prose has grace and wit, and he distills a good deal of sardonic fun from the whopping errors of the nation's oracles and the wondrous antics of the financial community." Originally published in 1955, Galbraith's book has risen once again as Americans look for perspective on the current global financial crisis.
The Day the Bubble Burst: A Social History of the Wall Street Crash of 1929
By Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts
Working from memoirs, interviews, and other first-person accounts, the authors have recreated the time leading up to and after the stock market crash of 1929. This book focuses on the people involved, including Joseph P. Kennedy, Stuart Mott, Jesse Livermore, Richard Whitney, Henry Ford, and many others.
1929: The Year of the Great Crash
By William K. Klingaman
Klingaman chronicles this momentous year in American history from its social life to its politics to its economics. He profiles people of interest, as well as the big events of the year.
Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Nineteen-Twenties
By Frederick Lewis Allen
Originally published in 1931, this book covers more than just the stock market crash of 1929. Allen discusses the entire decade in a narrative style with humor.
Fiction
Sea Glass
By Anita Shreve
Set in 1929 at a decaying beach house on the Atlantic Coast, Sea Glass unfolds a richly engaging tale of marriage, money, and troubled times. A young couple stretches financially to buy a house just before the stock market crash and their lives unravel afterwards.
1929
By Frederick Turner
This novel highlights the brief, brilliant career of Bix Beiderbecke: a Capone-controlled nightclub in 1926; the grueling cross-country tours with Paul Whiteman's "Symphonic Jazz" orchestra; the disastrous Whiteman trip to California to make the first all-color talkie musical; the stock market crash of 1929 that finds Bix in an asylum, victim of the era's signature product, bootleg gin; and finally, Bix's dying efforts to combine his piano compositions into a suite that would be the pinnacle of his life's work and his evocation of his time and place.
The Thief of Time
By John Boyne
In this carefully crafted novel, Boyne juxtaposes history and the buzz of the modern world, weaving together portraits of 1920s Hollywood, the French Revolution, the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and other landmark events into one man's story of murder, love, and redemption.
Book descriptions provided by BookLetters.
