Andrew Ross Sorkin brings the drama of the crash to a high pitch. He has consulted weather reports, diaries, architectural records and every newspaper imaginable to create a vivid and historically accurate account of the boom, crash and aftermath ... It is one of the best narrative histories I’ve read.
This is big stuff, and Sorkin ultimately does not deliver on his grandest ambitions. Nevertheless, there is a pulpy excitement in watching an author stretch his abilities, and if 1929 is not an intellectual monument, it does provide true-crime thrills that seem destined for prestige television adaptations ... Sorkin carries his readers along a current of astonishing detail conjured from the marginalia of his sources. It is impossible not to admire this dedication to craft, but readers can absorb only so many descriptions of elegant mansions and champagne yachts before feeling there is something prurient about so much high-definition exposure to extreme wealth ... The book’s quasi-pornographic character is exacerbated by Sorkin’s habit of writing in clichés, which at times gives his prose an appearance of too much makeup and not enough clothes ... When Sorkin catches his breath, moreover, he is strangely sympathetic to what he acknowledges is a 'gallery of rogues,' and even more strangely incurious about the political implications of his narrative ... There are surely important lessons for our current moment in Sorkin’s book; it is not clear he knows what they are.
1929 is an attempt to turn history back into journalism ... The problem with this approach is that everyone is dead—there’s no one to interview, and few primary sources for the human drama of it all ... Sorkin draws on letters, speeches, newspaper stories, and bank archives ... It may not be his fault that it only intermittently works ... Sorkin’s rendition is limited by his desire to frame 1929 as a story about people ... Sorkin is more interested in how the crisis felt than why it happened.
The focus on...less-heralded characters not only gives this book its novelty. It is also completely justified given the balance of power, of private over public, at the time ... Sorkin’s vivid and forensic account of standard market practices at the time is a real eye-opener ... First and foremost, this book is a work of true scholarship, the fruits of eight years of research by Sorkin drawing on an extensive array of materials, including personal correspondence and unpublished papers whose details have been woven into the story of the Great Crash for the first time.
Immersive ... The book benefits from the author’s meticulous archival research and his access to a number of documents that hadn’t been available to researchers before ... A dramatic read, and Sorkin’s you-are-there style leads to vivid scene-setting ... One wishes that Sorkin had more to say about the disquieting similarities between that time and our own, but the warning comes through nonetheless.
Sorkin’s subtitle promises 'the inside story', but sometimes hidden meanings are more titillating than enlightening ... Sorkin concludes by saying that, far from 'causing the Depression', Mitchell 'deserves a second, more nuanced consideration'. Maybe, but honestly, historians don’t hold Mitchell responsible for the crash, still less the Depression, and generally mention him briefly, if at all ... Andrew Ross Sorkin believes there is nothing to be done about financial boom and bust ... An inquiry into how the era of stricter rules kept capitalism sober and functioning might provide more enlightenment. But it would probably be less entertaining.
This work is more of a draft film script than an analysis ... The day-by-day account of macho men pacing on marble can become monotonous, despite the opulence and greed. But unexplored parallels with crypto-speculation today and a president who cannot communicate financial truths will be inspired in the minds of many readers.
Sorkin refers to ‘remarkable parallels’ between the run-up to that crisis and today’s political and economic climate, but he doesn’t elaborate on the notion ... A straight history, written in a journalistic register ... Yet some revealing parallels do emerge from beneath the surface.
Sorkin refers to ‘remarkable parallels’ between the run-up to that crisis and today’s political and economic climate, but he doesn’t elaborate on the notion ... A straight history, written in a journalistic register ... Yet some revealing parallels do emerge from beneath the surface.
