A rabble of dead money The great crash and the global depression: 1929-1939.

The Great Crash of 1929 profoundly disrupted the United States' confident march toward becoming the world's superpower. The breakneck growth of 1920s America-with its boom in automobiles, electricity, credit lines, radio, and movies-certainly presaged a serious recession by the decade's end, but not a depression. The totality of the collapse shocked the nation, and its duration scarred generations to come. In this lucid and fast-paced account o...