MFDF Board Bookshelf: 1929. Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History -- and How it Shattered a Nation. By Andrew Ross Sorkin. Viking. 2025.

Over the last year at MFDF events we’ve overheard more than one side conversation about the bestselling “1929. Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History -- and How it Shattered a Nation” and thought it was time to give it a read. While there were no cliffhangers or surprises, this historical account was riveting, and we can see why it resonates with the fund director community.  It’s hard to even imagine the time when markets existed without the constraints of the securities laws. Without those protections, 1929 shows how a few could accrue massive wealth, the excesses of large banks, companies, powerful individuals, and even smaller investors.  Reading 1929 was at times dismaying and discouraging as we observed people and institutions led by their worst instincts take on all sorts of risk as part of the Wall Street feeding frenzy.  Overall, there was little regard for the regular people who were also borrowing on margin to get in on the stock market boom. The strength of “1929” is how Sorkin humanized historical figures, making them real people making real decisions, good and bad. Their stories don’t necessarily engender sympathy but at least begin to explain some of their motivations. Even exalted figures were caught up in the hype and suffered huge losses, including Winston Churchill who became friends with financier Bernard Baruch, when Baruch was a member of a team negotiating reparations for Germany in 1919.  Despite all the losses and recriminations, there really was no sense of justice or satisfaction at the end of it all. One of the main figures in the book is Charles Mitchell, the head of National City Bank who took most of the heat for the crash and was tried in highly publicized proceedings. Sorkin writes: “To much of the country Mitchell’s acquittal landed not as a relief but as a provocation to a wounded and disillusioned public.”