Chipping Away At My Financial Pre-History

Posted by Sean | Posted under Books | July 6, 2008

There has been a sharp uptick in references to the Great Depression, as you can see in the screenshot from Google News. But are the parallels accurate? Or do we simply have too few points of reference? For many Americans, our financial history begins with bleak tales of the 1930s, told by parents or grandparents, preceeded (briefly) by the roaring 1920s.

Before that… who knows?

Since you can only have so many stock-market cycles in one century (and in one country), I’m interested in pushing the date of my own "financial pre-history" as far back as possible. For starters, I’ve come up with these 10 books:

Am I missing anything?

	History of Wall Street
	A History of the Global Stock Market: From Ancient Rome to Silicon Valley B. Mark Smith ancient to modern
	Eyewitness to Wall Street: 400 Years of Dreamers, Schemers, Busts, and Booms David Colbert 1600s to modern
	Wall Street: A History: From Its Beginnings to the Fall of Enron Charles R. Geisst 1790 to modern
	Fifty Years in Wall Street by Henry Clews late-1800s
	100 Years of Wall Street ~1900 to modern

	Speculation and Crises
	Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises by Charles P. Kindleberger and Robert Aliber
	The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market’s Perfect Storm by Robert F. Bruner and Sean D. Carr
	The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith
	Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation by Edward Chancellor
	Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein

Like this article? Subscribe to our RSS feed

If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.

1 Comment so far

MoneyEnergy July 7, 2008 9:49 am

Sean,

Nice new site - very organized looking! I like this financial pre-history focus topic, too. A different angle on personal finance than usual.

What I'm Doing...
- Reading "Once in Golconda"... feels *perfect* for 2009, even if written in 1969. 6 days ago
- Good news, bad news. Up 12% in little trading account (+19% longs, -7% short). Wasted some good volatility. 6 days ago
- We have been Walgreens-only for a long time. Now, we're getting our first CVS. DW is going to freakout. Best blogs? http://iheartcvs.com/ ?? 3 weeks ago
- Richard Russell, via Ritholtz.com, "I have never seen a bear market hit its low amid happy news headlines." http://tinyurl.com/5lqfrh 3 weeks ago
- ~7 hours into "The Snowball" Buffett audiobook... so far not much diff than Lowenstein's. 2008-12-04
- More updates...