Rainbow's End The Crash of 1929 [Paperback]

Rainbow's Endtells the story of the stock market collapse in a colorful, swift-moving narrative that blends a vivid portrait of the 1920s with an intensely gripping account of Wall Street's greatest catastrophe. The book offers a vibrant picture of a world full of plungers, powerful bankers, corporate titans, millionaire brokers, and buoyantly optimistic stock market bulls. We meet Sunshine Charley Mitchell, head of the National City Bank, powerful financiers Jack Morgan and Jacob Schiff, Wall Street manipulators such as the legendary Jesse Livermore, and the lavish-living Billy Durant, founder of General Motors. As Klein follows the careers of these men, he shows us how the financial house of cards gradually grew taller, as the irrational exuberance of an earlier age gripped America and convinced us that the market would continue to rise forever. Then, in October 1929, came a perfect storm -like convergence of factors that shook Wall Street to its foundations. We relive Black Thursday, when police lined Wall Street, brokers grew hysterical, customers bellowed like lunatics, and the ticker tape fell hours behind.

This compelling history of the Crash--the first to follow the market closely for the two years leading up to the disaster--illuminates a major turning point in our history.

Klein tells the story of the crash clearly and well, with some especially good pen portraits of characters such as Thomas Lamont, Jesse Livermore, Charley Mitchell and Albert Wiggin (who actually made money short-selling). --The Economist

A remarkable blend of sharp-eyed business history and keen cultural analysis,Rainbow's Endpaints the most compelling picture yet of the stock-market crash of 1929. In Maury Klein's able hands, the story of the crash ends up illuminating not just Wall Street in the Jazz Age, but America as well. Boom and bust: Klein gives us both, in all their intoxicating and hysterical glory. --James Surowiecki,