1929 is one of those books I think it’s important to read, but I can’t say I enjoyed it. This is a deeply depressing book in today’s information economy (and regular economy) because it shows you how few lessons we’ve learned in the one hundred years since the Great Depression. Not only do we repeat the same financial mistakes over and over, we apparently have also never punished the people who make financial disaster happen. It echoes a lot of the lessons we failed to learn in 2008, and it rhymes with what we are seeing happen now with the AI bubble. I’m sure it’ll be fine this time…
My favorite part of this book is the structure. It’s written as a narrative and assembled from as much first-hand material as can be gathered on something from a hundred years ago. We sit at the side of people like Charles Mitchell, a banker who bore a lot of responsibility for the practices that ultimately led to the Great Depression, and we get an intimate look at what his thinking was, his goals, and how he responded to the crisis.
You also get to see firsthand what a world without a functioning federal government looks like, in the eyes of Calvin Coolidge who looked to wind down the federal government’s presence in all things and at all times. This portion is especially frustrating in a post-DOGE world, but it’s still important to understand this sort of thing so that we know how we can potentially get out of it.
Idk if I recommend this or not. It’s good, but it’s depressing.
