Book REvieW
Fowler, William Worthington
Ten Years in Wall Street or,
Revelations of Inside Life
and Experience on ’Change, 1870
Fraser, Steve
Everyman a Speculator, 2005
Friedman, Milton
Capitalism and Freedom, 1962
Friedman, Milton and Schwartz,
Anna Jacobson
A Monetary History of the
United States, 1867–1960, 1963
Galbraith, John Kenneth
Money, 1975
Gambee, Robert
Wall Street: Financial Capital, 2002
Geisst, Charles
100 Years of Wall Street, 2000
Geisst, Charles
Wall Street: A History, 1997
Graham, Benjamin
The Intelligent Investor, 1949
Graham, Benjamin and Dodd, David
Security Analysis, 1934
Grant, James
Mr. Martket Miscalculates, 2008
Griffin, G. Edward
The Creature from Jekyll Island, 1994
Hammond, Bray
Banks and Politics in America from
the Revolution to the Civil War, 1957
Homer, Sidney and Sylla, Richard
A History of Interest Rates, 2005
Johnson, Simon
13 Bankers, 2010
Kane, Thomas P.
The Romance and Tragedy
of Banking, 1923
Kaufman, Henry
The Road to Financial
Reformation, 2009
Kindleberger, Charles
Manias, Panics, and Crashes, 1978
Klein, Maury
Rainbow’s End: The Crash of 1929, 2001
Kneen, Brewster
Invisible Giant, 1995
Koehn, Nancy (editor)
The Story of American Business, 2009
Kritzler, Edward
Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean, 2008
Lanier, Henry
A Century of Banking: 1822–1922, 1922
LeFevre, Edwin
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, 1923
Levy, Leon and Linden, Eugene
The Mind of Wall Street, 2004
wrote of the current, fifth edition: “What long has been the best history of financial pathologies is now even better. The reader who absorbs Kindleberger’s lessons will be prepared to
foresee and navigate the financial crises that surely lie ahead. Like a true classic, Manias is
both timely and timeless.”
Title: A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960
Author: Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz
Year of Publication: 1963
Find “definitive” and “authoritative” in the dictionary and
there will be a picture of this book. In March 2004 then Fed
Governor Ben S. Bernanke delivered the H. Parker Willis
Lecture in Economic Policy at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. He said of this book, “Friedman
and Schwartz offered important new evidence and arguments
about the role of monetary factors in the Great Depression. In
contradiction to the prevalent view of the time, that money
and monetary policy played at most a purely passive role in
the Depression, Friedman and Schwartz argued that ‘the [economic] contraction is in
fact a tragic testimonial to the importance of monetary forces.’” Bernanke’s homage is
remarkable in light of the fact that Friedman and Schwarz are fearless and assertive in
their critique of the Federal Reserve through and after the Crash of 1929.
Friedman and Schwartz have brought to bear an incredible amount of historical data to
support their analyses. And their central finding, that a calm hand in monetary policy and
steady money supply, ring just as timely and relevant today as they did at the time when
it was published. It bears noting that Chapter 7, The Great Contraction, was published on
its own in 1965 by Princeton University. When was the last time that an economic treatise
was issued as a popular paperback? Hugh Rockoff, professor of economics at Rutgers,
wrote in January 1965, “If Great Depressions could be prevented through timely actions
by the monetary authority (or by a monetary rule), as Friedman and Schwartz had contended, then the case for market economies was measurably stronger.”
Title: Extraordinary Popular
Delusions and the
Madness of Crowds
Author: Charles Mackay
Year of Publication: 1841
In his introduction Mackay
writes of “whims and peculiarities,” as if he were referring
to fashion or music. He then
cites the Crusades and witch
hunts as deadly examples of
mania and social madness.
This fondly familiar classic was
the original financial history
for broad audiences. The voice
is avuncular, the tone gently chiding. Mackay finds our financial faults lie not within our
stars but within ourselves. Still in print, it encourages investors in a solid Victorian mindset
to rise above their base nature and be creatures of thought rather than instinctive fear and
greed. The quotable line, to use a film reference is: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds;
it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one
by one.”
www.MoAF.org | Spring/Summer 2011 | Financial History 77