The great crash, 1929

History · Satire

First published: 1955
Print length: 206 pagesHoughton Mifflin Co., 1997

Description

John Kenneth Galbraith reconstructs the economic conditions and speculative fever that culminated in the Wall Street crash of 1929. His central concern is not simply why prices fell, but why investors, institutions, and the wider public embraced the belief that speculation could create wealth without corresponding work or productive value. Moving through the buildup to the collapse, he shows how confidence feeds on rising prices, how collective enthusiasm suppresses doubt, and how the resulting damage spreads beyond the market itself. Skeptical and often ironic, the book treats the crash as a social and institutional failure as much as a financial event. Its history becomes an argument for recognizing recurrent speculative habits before another frenzy acquires the authority of common sense.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Direct · Essayistic · Witty

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Cerebral · Irreverent · Satirical · Wistful

Structure

Argumentative · Chronological nonfiction

Focus

Argument · Ideas · Information

Emotional intensity

2 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 4 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

InequalityKnowledge and truthMoralityPowerWealth

About John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith was a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, public official, and durable public intellectual whose economic books reached a broad readership for decades. An institutionalist with post-Keynesian leanings, he wrote less about markets as abstract mechanisms than about the organizations, habits, and concentrations of power that shape economic life. His method joins large explanatory frameworks to pointed social observation, usually in direct or essayistic prose sharpened by irony. The Affluent Society builds its case by setting abundant private consumption beside neglected schools, infrastructure, and public services, then examining how advertising manufactures wants and inherited ideas about scarcity distort policy. In The Great Crash, 1929, chronological reconstruction becomes a study of collective confidence, showing how rising prices suppress doubt until speculation acquires the force of common sense. The Anatomy of Power is more schematic, dividing obedience into reward, punishment, and persuasion, then tracing those forms through governments, businesses, religions, and the press. Galbraith repeatedly turns familiar economic language into an object of scrutiny, asking whose interests it serves and which realities it leaves unseen.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Language: English
ISBN: 9780395859995

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