1929 is a narrative history of the 1929 stock market crash and its aftermath, told through the experiences of key financiers and political leaders.  It traces how exuberant speculation, regulatory neglect, and overconfident elites pushed the U.S. economy to the brink, triggering the Great Depression and reshaping the relationship between Wall Street and Washington.

Sorkin spends the first half of the book painting a market in which everyone wanted a brass ring dispensed by the New York Stock Exchange. Hotels had trading rooms in their lobbies for their guests. Ships plying the Atlantic offered trading lounges for their passengers. Even ladies’ boutiques offered women an opportunity to play.

One thing the book reminds the reader, credit was a relatively new thing in the twentieth century. General Motors invented the car loan in the 1920s. Credit soon spilled over onto the stock market. One could buy a stock with 90% of the purchase in a loan.

During the 1920s, easy credit, margin buying, and speculative fever created a sense that prosperity was permanent. Powerful bankers and business leaders kept fueling the bubble through aggressive stock promotion and lax oversight, ignoring or dismissing warning signs from skeptics and regulators.

The book follows the longer aftermath, showing how bank failures, collapsing corporate wealth, and policy missteps deepened the downturn into the Great Depression. It shows how the shattered public trust in markets and institutions led to new political coalitions, regulatory reforms, and a lasting skepticism about unchecked financial power.

Sorkin concentrates on over seventy major figures, including bankers like J.P. Morgan partners and Charles Mitchell, as well as presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt.

1929 is a solid book about a point in time that changed forever America.

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