History of the Great Depression?

August 23, 2008 4:14 PM

What is the definitive economic history that details contemporary thought regarding the Great Depression?

I would like an author that presents contemporary thought regarding the Great Depression. A plus would be if the book also details past "consensus" thought and why it, in retrospect, is incorrect. I'm not looking for light "pop" reading and I have a decent base with which to understand the author's arguments.

posted by prunes to education (8 comments total)

Galbraith's book has been in print since it came out in the 1950s
posted by matteo at 5:01 PM on August 23, 2008

I recommend Robert McElvaine's book on the subject.
posted by HotPatatta at 5:10 PM on August 23, 2008

The answer is: none. It is still a poorly understood event. I would start with the relevant chapters of Friedman and Schwartz, read Kindleberger's World in Depression, a few Bernanke papers and maybe Schlesinger's Crisis of the Old Order, though its scope extends beyond economics.
posted by shothotbot at 5:12 PM on August 23, 2008

Charles P Kindleberger was a respected economic historian who wrote 2 books you might like: 'Manias, panics and crashes' and 'The world in depression 1929 - 1939' which Galbraith apparently said was the best book on the topic.

Interestingly, Ben Bernanke is an expert in this area and his book 'Essays on the Great Depression' is well regarded.
posted by 8k at 5:30 PM on August 23, 2008

Or, what shothotbot said. And yes it's eternally debated, along with other financial crises - of particular interest right now amongst the economic commentariat are Japan's post-bubble situation, and the stagflation of the 1970s.
posted by 8k at 5:38 PM on August 23, 2008

Seconding Matteo's recommendation for Galbraith's book, The great crash: 1929. Fascinating read if you are into history and economics.
posted by zippy at 11:20 PM on August 23, 2008

There's no shortage of theorizing about Great Depression. But one book which I've found to be more evidence-based than most is Wigmore's The Crash and Its Aftermath.

He tracks prices and indexes in the stock and commodity markets chronologically, a kind of play by play analysis of the disaster as it unfolded. He does do some higher level root-cause analysis, but unlike many economic historians does not stray far from the data and doesn't get lost in woolly pet theories/ideologies.

(It also demolishes some well-worn myths about the Depression, e.g. that movie companies thrived as people went to the cinema to escape their daily woes)

The book is hard to find but can be borrowed through interlibrary loan at any university.
posted by storybored at 8:57 AM on August 24, 2008

Also, Galbraith's book is great and a pleasure to read, but it does cover mostly the events of the 1929 Crash, rather than the Depression.
posted by storybored at 8:58 AM on August 24, 2008