1929: The Year of the Great Crash [Hardcover]

William K. Klingaman (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The year 1929 saw both the peak of roaring-'20s prosperity and the stock market collapse that led to the Great Depression, when a third of the U.S. work force was unemployed. With vivid narrative and anecdotal profiles of such diverse characters as Herbert Hoover, Al Capone, Joseph P. Kennedy, the Marx Brothers, F. Scott Fitzgerald and J. P. Morgan, Klingaman ( 1919 ; 1941 ) shows that the same "mob psychology" that "had borne the bull market to irrational heights" eventually dragged stock prices far below inherent value. RCA, for example, plunged from 110 to 26. Ostentatious wealth, Prohibition gang wars, deadly labor suppression, political corruption, bank and brokerage wipeouts and margin-loan suicides: all are seen here as part of an economic and government failure that preceded the rise of Adolf Hitler and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Having anatomized the tumultuous years of 1919 ( LJ 8/87) and 1941 ( LJ 10/1/88), Klingaman now turns his attention, and his ability to make history fascinating, to 1929, the year of the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression. The author repeats his technique of surveying all aspects of the history of the year--social, political, financial--on a worldwide basis, but with the focus in this case on the United States. He works his way through the year, telling the tales of major figures, from Hoover to Baruch, and minor, such as small investor Edgar D. Brown. Gordon Thomas and Max M. Witts's The Day the Bubble Burst ( LJ 11/1/79) covered similar ground, but Klingaman's book was written in light of the 1987 crash, and the circumstances it relates speak directly to the question, "Could it happen again?" Highly recommended.
- Pat Ensor, Indiana State Univ. Lib., Terre Haute
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 393 pages
• Publisher: Harper & Row; 1st edition (May 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060160810
• ISBN-13: 978-0060160814
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,881,082 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An absorbing reading experience, May 1, 2003

By 

Schmerguls "schmerguls" (Sioux City, Ia USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: 1929: The Year of the Great Crash (Hardcover)

I read this book because I so enjoyed reading the author's 1941: Our Lives in a World on the Edge, which I finished reading 29 Nov 1997. This book is just as good. This is not academic history, but Klingaman weaves from other books and contemporary sources an account of the time from Election Day in 1928 till mid-1930, and does a superlative job. He does not tell what happens in the future but tells the events as they unfold. The only way that the future is involved is in the selection of the events to be related. And he does not discuss only the stock market, but brings in things such as the St. Valentine's Day massacre on Feb 14, 1929, and the events when Hoover was inaugurated--supposedly Hoover and Coolidge as they rode to the Inauguration said not a word to each other! The book is just filled with interesting items of information. One wonders how different it would be written after the bubble burst of 2000-2001. I have read at least two other books on the Crash of 1929 (The Day America Crashed, by Tom Schactman--read 3 July 1979--and The Day the Bubble Burst, by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts--read 25 Mar 2000)and this book is a better book than either of those.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars good summary of a turbulent year, January 31, 1998

By 

Robert Nowall (Cape Coral, Florida USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 1929: The Year of the Great Crash (Paperback)

Like his "1919" and "1941", Klingaman holds your interest with the story of a single year. Reads as compelling as a novel. Colorful (and real) characters wander in and out of the narrative, many of their stories intersecting at the stock market collapse in October. I enjoyed it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brief comment, September 27, 2008

By 

magellan (Santa Clara, CA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: 1929: The Year of the Great Crash (Hardcover)

This was a very readable and interesting account of the events leading up to the great crash. Weaving together the stories of diverse people, from Hollywood to Wall Street, the author gives a vivid picture of this chaotic time and its aftermath.

The many anecdotes are fascinating as well as poignant; Winston Churchill himself was present at the New York stock exchange on that fateful day in October when he came to the U.S. to visit William Randolph Hearst, and had no idea he had lost his own fortune until he returned to England. Churchill watched the commotion on the trading floor below from a balcony, not realizing his own fortune, which was heavily invested in U.S. stocks, was vanishing. A famous, wealthy trader (whose name escapes me), courageously but foolishly walks around to the major trading stations on the floor, expending his own fortune to buy what he thinks are bargain-priced stocks while the other traders cheer in approval. His heroic gesture was fruitless, however, and he was wiped out minutes later. Groucho Marx was an avid trader and continually interrupted the filming of "Duck Soup" to call his stock broker.* Marx lost everything in the crash. A few, such as Will Rogers, pulled their money out in time and saved their fortunes.

Set against the turbulent backdrop of the 1920s with its labor upheavals, gangland activities (the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, which was never proved but attributed to Al Capone, occurred in 1929), and frenetic stock market, as the country enjoyed a fin-de-siecle but soon to vanish prosperity, this book provides an informative, readable, and entertaining account of that fateful year.

*Note: Not sure it was Duck Soup at this point, but anyway, it was whatever movie the Marx brothers were filming at that time.