1929

Reviews / Votes

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of eight years of research by Sorkin drawing on an extensive array of materials, including personal correspondence and unpublished papers whose details have been woven into the story of the Great Crash for the first time. 1929 will have a distinct place within the Great Crash/Depression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 -- Andy Haldane * Financial Times * Totally fascinating, chilling... this is a fastidiously composed and gripping account of greed and ego versus accountability and responsibility colliding -- Chris Evans Mr. Sorkin wisely tells this sprawling story in a focused way, reconstructing how crucial figures experienced the ructions almost hour by hour . . . Mr. Sorkin's coverage of the crisis in 2008 was based on hundreds of interviews, but most of the people in this tale have been dead for decades. You would be forgiven for forgetting it. The combination of extensive research and a lively tone makes both the crash and the men involved feel more recent * Economist * 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 * The Wall Street Journal * Vivid, pacy, a gallery of finely drawn pen portraits... shows how delusion, myopia and greed led to financial disaster... [Sorkin] reconstructs a Wall Street that is at once a period piece and familiar setting -- Pratinav Anil * The Times * An absolutely riveting & illuminating account of the '29 market crash, one that clarifies many misinterpretations & has deep resonance today -- David Grann, New York Times bestselling author Groundbreaking... Whereas Galbraith saw the crash through the lens of economics, Sorkin comes at it as a scoop-driven storytelling business journalist, of which he is one of the best. Having written the definitive fly-on-the-wall account of the financial crisis of 2008, Too Big to Fail, and co-created the hit hedge fund television melodrama Billions, Sorkin is again strong on character, drama and narrative, bringing events and long-dead personalities to life in all their complexity and colour -- Matthew Bishop * Observer * One of my books of 2025... a character-led study of the events leading up to the Great Crash -- Lewis Goodhall * New Statesman * I am absolutely loving 1929... He writes things so brilliantly, he writes it like a page turner and its absolutely fascinating... it's an extraordinary story. -- Marina Hyde * The Rest is Entertainment * It would be tempting to say that among bestselling American financial authors, Andrew Ross Sorkin is the new Michael Lewis . . . 1929 is an epic exercise in bringing history to life through its big characters. Like Too Big to Fail it will be labelled 'definitive'-and deservedly so -- Martin Vander Weyer * Spears * 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 <i> Washington 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 <i> Steve Jobs </i> and <i> Benjamin Franklin </i> 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 <i> G-Man </i> 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 <i> American Lion </i> 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 <i> No Ordinary Time </i> 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 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 Riveting, timely... brings to life the furious disputes between brokers and policymakers, the frantic attempts to keep the economic ship on an even keel and the blunders that helped tip the entire financial system into freefall -- Alexander Howard * The Conversation *