Sorkin’s 1929: A Critique

James A. Dorn

Andrew Ross Sorkin’s blockbuster, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation, seeks to explain the stock market crash and the Great Depression. His approach is to paint a narrative by considering “the motivations and disparate stories of the central actors” (p. x). These include the heads of major financial firms, businesses, the New York Stock Exchange, and the Federal Reserve, as well as politicians, speculators, economists, and journalists.