I recall my grandparents talking with deep emotion about the Great Depression and the stock market crash less than twenty years before I was born. I could not understand the financial reasons for either event, but I learned that the life I enjoyed as a child should not be taken for granted. The drama and trauma of those epic events are well documented in this bestselling work by financial journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, who traces the history of banking and the tangled
connections between Wall Street and Washington, D.C. politics. He leads us from the lackluster Hoover administration to FDR’s ambitious administration, allowing us to eavesdrop on conversations among political leaders, industry titans, and Wall Street insiders. If Sorkin wanted to prove that human nature has not changed, his book is conclusive evidence of the greed, duplicity, deception, and hubris that contributed to the destruction of lives and wealth in America. All this happened during Prohibition, but the author does not suggest there was a connection, except to point out that alcohol was widely available for those who wanted to drink. The Audible version was well narrated by the author. The book deserves to be a bestseller.