1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History–and How It Shattered a Nation

“In 1929 Andrew Ross Sorkin brings the drama of the crash to a high pitch. He has consulted weather reports, diaries, architectural records and every newspaper imaginable to create a vivid and historically accurate account of the boom, crash, and aftermath. Although Mr. Sorkin offers hints that the crash looms larger in our memory than it did in the moment, his focus is on portraying the lives of the people who lived through it. It is one of the best narrative histories I’ve read.” —Judge Glock, The Wall Street Journal “Sorkin’s vivid and forensic account . . . is a real eye-opener . . . a work of true scholarship, the fruits of eight years of research by Sorkin drawing on an extensive array of materials, including personal correspondence and unpublished papers whose details have been woven into the story of the Great Crash for the first time. 1929 will have a distinct place within the Great Crash/Depression genre, just as did Too Big to Fail and for the same reasons—a people’s tragedy told through the lens of the leading players and their personalities, friends and families.” —The Financial Times “Andrew Ross Sorkin has done it again. 1929 is mesmerizing from beginning to end—a deeply important book. Like Too Big to Fail, it’s a masterclass in narrative nonfiction, a dazzling tale of a pivotal moment in history brought to life through meticulous reporting. The colorful characters, the politics, the financial mania—it all unfolds with eerie relevance. You feel like you’re reading about today. I was blown away.” —Walter Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin “When a story of immense historical gravity—the drama and trauma of 1929—meets a writer steeped in its scholarship and gifted with a rare clarity of vision, the result is a work of lasting resonance: tangible and immediate. In 1929, Andrew Ross Sorkin captures the moment when ambition, greed, and speculative euphoria collided to plunge America into an economic abyss, sparking the Great Depression. Through vivid storytelling and a cast of powerfully rendered characters, Sorkin reveals a nation at the breaking point—grappling with denial, reckoning, and the steep cost of excess. It’s a haunting elegy for a fractured era, and a timeless reminder that progress is fragile, choices have repercussions, and the flaws embedded in the human condition are ours to confront.” —Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of No Ordinary Time and An Unfinished Love Story “In this glorious account of the 1929 crash, Andrew Ross Sorkin conjures up the mad euphoria, crushing collapse, and subsequent political reckoning with equal finesse. He tells the story through a rich cast of unforgettable characters and resists the urge to portray them as simple heroes or villains so much as flawed people lost in a calamity almost beyond their comprehension. This converts his saga into a timeless cautionary tale that speaks to the present no less than the past.” —Ron Chernow, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Mark Twain “With a storyteller’s eye and an expert’s grasp of detail, Andrew Ross Sorkin has given us an engaging and memorable account of one of the largest events in American history—the Crash of 1929. In Sorkin’s gifted hands, this is a human drama with profound consequences for democracy and for capitalism—and it is a reminder of the fragility of the things we like to think are invulnerable.” —Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Lion and And There Was Light “In Andrew Ross Sorkin’s fresh and revealing telling, the stock market crash of 1929 becomes a great human drama, full of contingency and misunderstanding, friends and enemies, courage and fear, greed and generosity. Out of that financial catastrophe came many of the institutions and ideas that we still turn to in moments of crisis. But as Sorkin shows, even those with the greatest wealth and power and experience can still be caught off guard by the twists and turns of history.” —Beverly Gage, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of G-Man and The Day Wall Street Exploded “In this gripping account of the great crash of 1929, Andrew Ross Sorkin tells the story through the actions of a handful of the central protagonists, among them a rogue’s gallery of Wall Street bankers and speculators, living in their own make-believe world, Washington politicians grappling with forces they did not fully understand, and Federal Reserve officials torn by outside pressures. As a student of financial crises, I found fresh lessons in his pages. As you read his brilliant narrative, the tragic arc of the personal stories, mirrored by the unfolding calamity overtaking the nation at large, you cannot help but think of today.” —Liaquat Ahamed, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lords of Finance “1929 is the story of the great fall, told from the vantage of a fly on the wall. That wall is Wall Street, and that fly is Andrew Ross Sorkin. This gripping account revisits timeless themes—greed, hubris, comeuppance—but it also sets that fateful year in a moment in time, at once distant, and bracingly familiar. A riveting, crucial read.” —Jill Lepore, New York Times bestselling author of These Truths and We the People About the Author Andrew Ross Sorkin is an award-winning journalist for The New York Times and a co-anchor of Squawk Box, CNBC’s signature morning program. He is also the founder and editor at large of DealBook, an online daily financial report published by The New York Times that he started in 2001. Sorkin is the bestselling author of Too Big to Fail and the co-producer of the 2011 film adaptation, which was nominated for eleven Emmy Awards. Sorkin is also the co-creator of the drama series Billions on Showtime.