The Great Crash 1929 (Penguin Business)
 
 
Share your own customer images
Search inside another edition of this book
Tell the Publisher!
I’d like to read this book on Kindle

Don t have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

The Great Crash 1929 (Penguin Business) [Paperback]

John Kenneth Galbraith (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)

Available from these sellers.


12 new from £4.91 15 used from £0.01

Formats

 Amazon Price New from Used from
Hardcover --   -- £4.74
Paperback £5.99   £4.28 £4.46
Paperback, 29 Oct 1992 --   £4.91 £0.01
Unknown Binding --   -- --

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

A Short History of Financial Euphoria (Penguin business)

A Short History of Financial Euphoria (Penguin business)

by John Kenneth Galbraith
4.4 out of 5 stars (7)  £5.83
The Affluent Society: Updated with a New Introduction by the Author (Penguin Business)

The Affluent Society: Updated with a New Introduction by the Author (Penguin Business)

by John Kenneth Galbraith
4.6 out of 5 stars (7)  £6.58
The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008

The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008

by Paul Krugman
3.7 out of 5 stars (15)  £6.18
A History of Economics: The Past as the Present (Penguin Economics)

A History of Economics: The Past as the Present (Penguin Economics)

by John Kenneth Galbraith
4.3 out of 5 stars (6)  £7.95
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

by Niall Ferguson
4.2 out of 5 stars (61)  £5.65
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin; New Ed edition (29 Oct 1992)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0140136096
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140136098
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.2 x 1.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 94,174 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

More About the Authors

Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith
John Glabraith
John Glabraith

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

Rampant speculation. Record trading volumes. Assets bought not because of their value but because the buyer believes he can sell them for more in a day or two, or an hour or two. Welcome to the late 1920s in the US. There are obvious and absolute parallels to the great bull market of the late 1990s, writes Galbraith in a new introduction dated 1997. Of course, Galbraith notes, every financial bubble since 1929 has been compared to the Great Crash, which is why this book has never been out of print since it became a bestseller in 1955.

Galbraith writes with great wit and erudition about the perilous actions of investors and the curious inaction of the government. He notes that the problem wasn't a scarcity of securities to buy and sell: "The ingenuity and zeal with which companies were devised in which securities might be sold was as remarkable as anything." Those words become strikingly relevant in light of revenue-negative start-up companies coming into the market each week in the 1990s, along with fragmented pieces of established companies, like real estate and bottling plants. Of course, the 1920s were different from the 1990s. There was no safety net below citizens, no unemployment insurance or Social Security. And today we don't have the creepy investment trusts--in which shares of companies that held some stocks and bonds were sold for several times the assets' market value. But, boy, are the similarities spooky, particularly the prevailing trend at the time toward corporate mergers and industry consolidations--not to mention all the partially informed people who imagined themselves to be financial geniuses because the shares of stock they bought kept going up. --Lou Schuler, Amazon.com

Product Description

Examines the "gold-rush fantasy" in American psychology and describes its dire consequences. The Florida land boom, the operations of Insull, Kreuger and Hatry, and the Shandoah Corporation all come together in Galbraith's study of concerted human greed and folly.
See all Product Description
Inside This Book (Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(9)
(8)
(7)
(7)
(5)
(5)
(4)
(4)
(3)
(3)
Agree with these tags?
See all 19 tags...

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

The Great Crash 1929 (Penguin Business)
90% buy the item featured on this page:
The Great Crash 1929 (Penguin Business) by John Kenneth Galbraith Paperback 4.6 out of 5 stars (26)
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
3% buy
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson Paperback 4.2 out of 5 stars (61)
£5.65
The Affluent Society: Updated with a New Introduction by the Author (Penguin Business)
3% buy
The Affluent Society: Updated with a New Introduction by the Author (Penguin Business) by John Kenneth Galbraith Paperback 4.6 out of 5 stars (7)
£6.58
Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street
2% buy
Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street by Andrew Ross Sorkin Paperback 4.6 out of 5 stars (36)
£6.58
› Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

26 Reviews
5 star:
 (19)
4 star:
 (5)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.6 out of 5 stars (26 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book and highly recommended to anyone with any interest whatsoever in economics or the dark days of 1929., 4 Jan 2007
By Philip Mayo - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   
This review is from: The Great Crash 1929 (Penguin Business) (Paperback)
One of the most surprising and delightful things that I found about the book, particularly in view of the potentially heavy subject matter, was how wonderfully readable Professor Galbraith is. There are not that many world renowned experts in any field who can write as well as they can understand their subject. It's a bit like finding that a world class footballer can also play first violin. This book reads like the work of a top drawer professional writer who has immersed him/herself in the subject for a period and, with ongoing expert guidance and hands-on editing, has brought the subject home in fine style. It reads to me a bit like Tom Wolfe (of the Right Stuff etc), wonderfully literate, sardonic prose. It really is quite unexpected. Marvellous. You will have more than one chuckle out loud which may raise one of the live-in's eyebrows. Chuckling at economics now? Hmmm.

Anyway, the stock market fell, measured by the Times Industrial Average, from 542 down to 224, from October through Nov 1929, and then more gradually to only 58, basically a tenth of its peak 1929 value, by July 1932. Drastic times indeed. This residual value that the market held, 58, in 1932, was roughly the same amount by which the market fell, in only one day, 28/10/1929, Black Thursday. The Professor's contention seems to be that the Depression and the Crash, while not totally unrelated, were less connected than popular opinion held then, or holds now. The contention is that prior to the crash, that the economy was not fundamentally sound. Although there were no glaring warning signs in the economic indicators reported in the first half of 1929, there were some red lights flickering. The Professor goes on to detail and explain those. Of course I am still no expert on what happened in 1929 and why. But due to this book I have a better idea. And it has encouraged me to read more about it. Which I intend to do shortly. And further works by the extremely readable Professor Galbraith will most certainly be on my list.



Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars What Actually Happened in 1929?, 5 July 2004
By Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 97,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   
This review is from: The Great Crash 1929 (Penguin Business) (Paperback)
Having recently lived through the crash of the dot-com stocks, I thought it was a particularly appropriate moment to reread John Kenneth Galbraith's famous history of the stock market crash of 1929 in the United States. Professor Galbraith's final words prove to be prophetic as he suggests that as soon as the lessons of 1929 are forgotten, the speculative excesses that led to that debacle will recur. I am sure that when the dot-bomb experience is forgotten, it will be repeated with some new class of speculation in some future generation.

With the recent experience of seeing a market mania, I came away more impressed with this book than before. Professor Galbraith does a fine job of capturing the psychology that builds into and sustains a mania. He also writes like a novelist rather than like an economist. That talent makes the message easy to grasp and appreciate.

I was also impressed by how our popular perceptions of 1929 are so often wrong. For example, most people believe that many "broken" speculators committed suicide. Although some did, there was no significant rise in the suicide rate compared to a general trend in that direction.

Economists often like to fault the Federal Reserve for the crash. That blame seems somewhat misplaced when you learn that there was very little government debt that the Fed could repurchase to create liquidity. Had the Fed acted differently, the crash might have come a little sooner and not been quite so severe . . . but the fundamentals would probably not have changed too much.

Another misperception is that everyone was speculating. By even the most generous measures, the speculators probably never numbered over a million people.

Although this is a history, Professor Galbraith takes on the economic question of how the crash contributed to the Depression. Although we know very little about the economic details of 1929, I was impressed by the point about how much consumer spending was concentrated in the wealthiest people. As they lost vast sums, both spending for consumer goods and savings for capital were decimated. With the broader income distribution of today, such a cataclysm would not be so harmful (as we saw in the aftermath of the dot-com crash).

There is an excellent parallel discussion of the land boom in Florida earlier in the 1920's that is very rewarding. I was intrigued by the ways that ever increasing ways of extending leverage were created so that both bubbles could climb higher. In Florida, people didn't actually buy the land. They bought options to buy the land, and traded those. In the stock market, holding companies sold stock and then floated new holding companies. These were capitalized with common stock, preferred and debt so that all of the appreciation would accrue to the common holders. Naturally, the opposite occurred on the way down. Many stocks fell by over 99 percent, as a result.

Everyone who is tempted to buy any item primarily because it is thought to represent an opportunity for a quick buck should read this book.

Look for true value in all that you do!

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, Solid write up of the 1929 crash, 10 Dec 2008
By A. I. Mackenzie "alimack" (Glasgow, Scotland.) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Great Crash 1929 (Penguin Business) (Paperback)
This is a surprisingly good reference on the 1929 crash. The book is very readable considering the subject matter. For me the run up to the crash got a bit too much detail whereas the details of aftermath and solutions got less attention than I would have liked. He also focuses on trivia about suicide rates which is quite entertaining but doesn't seem to the point (which for me is to understand and avoid these kind of wild crashes).

We seem to have duplicated the conditions of this crash almost exactly in 2008 and indulged in the same property and derivative based speculation. It's also interesting that JK Galbraith goes against current (neo-liberal) orthodoxy e.g. the rich having too much money is destabilising rather than it being a benefit as 'trickle down' theory suggests.

So a good solid history, perhaps a little light on solutions. But, by ignoring history we seem to have repeated it.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars The book every student of the Crash of '29 should read
As someone who only knew the myths of the Stock Market Crash of 1929, this book was a real revelation to me. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Dewdrop

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Book - Poor Edition
The book is a marvellous illustration of the Great Crash of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929. It explores the background of the Crash and the conditions which facilitated its... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Doultsinea Donkichotaki

4.0 out of 5 stars Great description of the crash
Kenneth Galbraith is a really could narrator of economic history and his account of the Great Crash on Wall Street in 1929 is both, enjoyable and easy to read. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Michael Klein

5.0 out of 5 stars The Great Crash by JK Galbraith
The copy was in excellent condition, as good as new.

This is a book still relevant today, and considered a classic.
Published 8 months ago by David J. Taylor-gooby

5.0 out of 5 stars Prophetic
This is a very well written and entertaining book about the recurrent nature of human folly. Written in the 1950s, it forewarns of the possibility of another economic collapse... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Colum Kenny

5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended for Everyone.....
This is a great book in many ways. Its a very unbiased, balanced and accurate description of the Great Crash and the following Great Depression. Read more
Published 10 months ago by DF

5.0 out of 5 stars Causes of The Great Crash and Depression 1929 to 1941
The fall in the stock market in the USA created a depression more severe than any ever seen in modern history. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Stuart Evans

5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic
Not that easy to read and a little bit hard in some areas (not a novel shall we say). BUT very relevant for 2009. Read more
Published 13 months ago by M. Sear

5.0 out of 5 stars History doesn't repeat itself, but it rimes. - Mark Twain
Very familiar with the crash of 2008, this book is somewhat THE play book for the past events (Greenspan put, Housing bubble, SEC, the domino effect, malinvestment, etc. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Mr. M. Jung

5.0 out of 5 stars Deja vu all over again
This is an amazing book. A joy to read, hilariously funny, and useful in the current economic environment to spot government propaganda.
Published 14 months ago by Pyor

Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Discussion Replies Latest Post
economics
Could any country get the growth of China 		11 4 days ago
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject












i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback



Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.