The Great Crash 1929

This is John Kenneth Galbraith’s 1955 book, not Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 2025 book — they are two different books about the same crash, and the Sorkin one is 1929 (Sorkin). Galbraith, an economist writing twenty-six years after the fact, traces the speculative mania of 1927–1929 — the investment trusts, the margin accounts, the Florida land boom that preceded it — and argues that the crash was the predictable end of a mood rather than an accident of policy. His recurring theme is that the machinery of speculation is always rebuilt, because the memory of its failure is always short.

Why it’s on the list: The canonical short account of 1929, and the reference point every later bubble book argues with. Reading it beside 1929 (Sorkin) is the point of having both.

Where I saw it: @tylercosgrove’s October 15, 2025 list of 25 books he offered to send to Jared Kushner.

Connections

• 1929 (Sorkin) — the other 1929 book on the same list. Sorkin’s 2025 narrative, not this one.
• John Kenneth Galbraith — the author.
• Bubble — the concept this book largely defined for a general readership.
• Wall Street — the subject.
• Financial History — the section of the anti-library this sits in.