1929: America before the Crash

1929: America before the Crash By Warren Sloat Macmillan, 370 pp., $14.95 As the Carter economy has lurched from crisis to chaos, Americans have been wont to view the fiftieth anniversary of the Stock Market Crash less as a nostalgic milestone than as a grim suggestion of historical determinism. And as our leaders continue to assure us that the light of economic recovery beckons at the end of this dark tunnel of economic uncertainty, we are reminded of the bromides of half a century past which neither palliated the trauma of a national catastrophe nor hastened its end.

Perhaps to honor Santayana’s warning, several publishers have produced studies of that fateful year when the American economy sputtered, stalled, and nosedived toward a crash that remains a permanent scar upon our national consciousness. Warren Sloat’s narrative of this moment and the years that led to it is probably the best of the lot, despite his nagging tendency to take corporate greed as the root of all evil. If the historians of The Great Depression have arrived at anything approaching consensus on any point, it is that there are no simple explanations. However, Sloat’s experience as a newspaperman has fortified him with an abiding skepticism; and while his credits include contributions to Ramparts, The Nation, and Commonweal, he has written an informative and well-documented book that is worth reading.

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Alan L. Miller

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1929: America before the Crash By Warren Sloat Macmillan, 370 pp., $14.95 As the Carter economy has lurched from crisis to chaos, Americans have been wont to view the fiftieth anniversary of the Stock Market Crash less as a nostalgic milestone than as a grim suggestion of historical determinism. And as our leaders continue to assure us that the light of economic recovery beckons at the end of this dark tunnel of economic uncertainty, we are reminded of the bromides of half a century past which neither palliated the trauma of a national catastrophe nor hastened its end.

Perhaps to honor Santayana’s warning, several publishers have produced studies of that fateful year when the American economy sputtered, stalled, and nosedived toward a crash that remains a permanent scar upon our national consciousness. Warren Sloat’s narrative of this moment and the years that led to it is probably the best of the lot, despite his nagging tendency to take corporate greed as the root of all evil. If the historians of The Great Depression have arrived at anything approaching consensus on any point, it is that there are no simple explanations. However, Sloat’s experience as a newspaperman has fortified him with an abiding skepticism; and while his credits include contributions to Ramparts, The Nation, and Commonweal, he has written an informative and well-documented book that is worth reading.