1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How it Shattered a Nation

By Andrew Ross Sorkin

Viking, October 2025/592 pages

Reviewed by Douglas Porter

February 8, 2026

The risk of an abrupt reversal of fortune always looms large over financial markets, even in the best of times. Especially in the best of times.

And the spectre of 1929 looms largest, which is what makes Andrew Ross Sorkin’s latest book so instantly compelling, given the record highs in so many various financial markets in recent months.

Despite the intense policy uncertainty of the past year and the daily barrage of disturbing headlines, global equity markets have climbed the proverbial wall of worry to record heights in early 2026.

While that rise has been supported by falling interest rates and sustained strength in corporate profits, it has also been fuelled by widespread enthusiasm for artificial intelligence, and the heavy spending that is going into the AI backbone.

Lofty valuations on the mega technology companies have, in turn, sparked talk of an AI bubble, with many commentators warning of a potentially devastating crack in equity prices from these rich levels.

The warnings usually conjure up past episodes, such as the 1999 internet boom, which is probably the closest parallel with current conditions. Some also cite the brief market plunge in 1987, which had few economic ramifications, or even the deep 2008 drop, which presaged the Great Recession.

But few have dared to compare current circumstances with the Roaring ‘20s, the crash of 1929 and the devastating decade-long depression that ensued; that’s just a bridge too far.

Enter 1929, Andrew Ross Sorkin’s second book and his deep dive into the market trauma that, for 80 years, was synonymous with the term “stock market crash”.

Sorkin’s first book, Too Big to Fail, is widely seen as the definitive take on the 2008 financial crisis, with particular focus on its causes. His new book is a historical narrative of a very different financial and economic crisis, and it focuses much more heavily on the “who”, rather than the “why” or “how”.

Accordingly, it’s a much more accessible book, in which Sorkin’s deep research helps to recreate meetings, conversations and events from those fateful days.

Of course, the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression are hardly untilled land, when it comes to books, studies, essays, etc. Unlike the 2008 global financial crisis, on which Sorkin’s book was one of the first, the volume of work on the Great Depression is legion.

Canada’s own John Kenneth Galbraith wrote what is widely viewed as the most authoritative account 70 years ago with The Great Crash 1929.

Authors as diverse as Pierre Berton, Studs Terkel, John Steinbeck and Milton Friedman have also taken a crack at analyzing and reporting on the Great Depression. The challenge is providing fresh insight or presenting a new dimension, and Sorkin largely delivers.

1929 takes us behind the scenes with an in-depth look at some of the key characters from both Wall Street and Washington.

The lead actor in this play is Charlie Mitchell, the CEO of National City Bank (the forerunner of Citibank), with supporting roles provided by: Thomas Lamont of the House of Morgan; New Deal fixture John Jakob Raskob, who served chair of the Democratic National Committee and the force behind the Empire State Building; Senator Carter Glass; and, plenty of cameos—including by Winston Churchill and Groucho Marx.

Sorkin vividly recreates the rising tension on Wall Street as markets crack, and as the top bankers seek to stem the damage, the parallels with 2008 are striking.

The book is full of rich detail and fascinating anecdotes. One criticism is that too much focus was spent on the opulent lifestyles of the main characters, but the detailed descriptions help frame the era, foreshadow the tough times to come, and provide a contrast to how far some will fall.

The book is split into two parts, with the first half covering the events of calendar-year 1929, and the second looking at the aftermath of the crash and the long, grinding slide into the depths of the Great Depression in 1933.

For market analysts and those who lived through the 2008 financial crisis, part one will likely be of greater interest. Sorkin vividly recreates the rising tension on Wall Street as markets crack, and as the top bankers seek to stem the damage, the parallels with 2008 are striking.

Per the following excerpt on October 28, 1929, aka Black Monday (which had followed Black Thursday and preceded Black Tuesday), it was a bleak week:

“Mitchell, stunned by the market’s violent descent, headed to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for a meeting of the executive committee as they tried to decide what steps, if any, to take.

The meeting, which started at 2 p.m., was short, ending at 3:05 p.m. They reviewed reports about the state of the money market, a report on banks ‘borrowing in excess of capital and surplus’ and ‘banks on our special list’. But it quickly became clear that no one on the board had any big ideas.

Mitchell then made his way to the House of Morgan just before 5 p.m., where many of the bank CEOs had assembled to discuss what action they might take. This time, they decided that no decisive move was warranted.

By the time the ticker caught up to the close of market, nine million shares had been traded that day, more than double the daily average. The decline had been calamitous; the Dow dropped more than 38 points, or 13 percent.”

In an amazing piece of historical coincidence, the chapter then goes on to note that Mitchell later that day attended a small dinner party with Winston Churchill who, as luck would have it, was in the visitors’ gallery of the New York Stock Exchange the day of the crash.

Churchill noted: “I expected to see pandemonium; but the spectacle that met my eyes was one of surprising calm and orderliness.” To put that day’s events into modern context, in the past 70 years there has only been one daily drop in the Dow of greater than 13% (the record 22.6% plunge on October 19, 1987).

The second part of the book deals with the aftermath of the crash, and partially explains why the events of 1929 eventually morphed into the Great Depression—whereas the even deeper drop in 1987 made almost no lasting impression on the economy.

In this half, the politicians assume a greater role, with much more focus on how Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt dealt with the deepening economic calamity; the short answer is “not very well”.

There’s also the comeuppance of various industry leaders, including some criminal convictions. And, of course, there is the regulatory backlash to the events of the 1920s, including a detailed look into how the Glass-Steagall act came into being.

The act, which separated commercial and investment banking, passed in 1933 and remained in effect for 66 years before being largely repealed in 1999… just in time to sow the seeds for the 2008 financial trauma. Perhaps a deeper look at the history of 1929-33 by policymakers would have helped avert the worst excesses eight decades later.

Following his essential postmortem on the 2008 crash, with 1929, Andrew Ross Sorkin has secured his reputation as Wall Street’s most capable crisis coroner.

Policy Contributing Writer Douglas Porter is Chief Economist for BMO.