The Great Crash
Selwyn Parker
This is the story of the financial cataclysm that started with the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929 and set in motion a series of economic, political and social events that affected many millions of people in the United States, Britain, Europe, and much of the Empire. It came to be called the Depression or Great Depression or the Slump, but it was much more than that. The Crash rolled across the world like a tidal wave, toppling governments and transforming policies, speeding the rise of dictatorships in Italy and Germany, wrecking entire industries and plunging millions into unemployment and poverty. Along the way it ruined the reputations of a generation of politicians, economists and central bankers. The Crash also knocked thirty per cent off the value of the British pound with devastating consequences for the pound in the people’s pocket for the next half century. Of the major economies, only Japan and the Soviet Union escaped the cataclysm. By the time it lifted between 1933-35, the lives of people in a score of countries had changed forever.
Book Details:
- Author: Selwyn Parker
- Published Year: 2009
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Rights Sold
- UK: Piatkus
- Brazil: Editora Globo
- China: Electronics Industry Publishing
- Israel: Sifriat Ma'ariv
- Turkey: Arkadas
- China: Posts & Telecommunications Press.
Selwyn Parker
Born in New Zealand in 1941, son of a Methodist pastor and a music teacher, Selwyn majored in French and German at the University of Auckland and taught for two years in the remote farming town of Otorohanga in the King Country before relocating to Britain and starting in journalism with the Enfield Weekly Herald. He got his grounding with the news agencies – Reuters in London and Agence France Presse in Paris – before moving into print journalism. Since then he has worked in several countries for such publications as the Sydney Morning Herald, Time Magazine, Newsweek and the Au...
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Book Reviews
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"Parker is good on details like these; his narrative is brisk and chirpy, and he has a nice eye for personality..."
Daily Telegraph -
"...racy and colourful. It has a broad sweep, covering how the depression spread from the US to Britain, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, Japan and elsewhere....The book is good, too, on personalities."
Financial Times -
"Parker has written an engaging, if not heavily researched, book on the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and its global aftermath. He is a confident writer with an assured economic grounding and an anecdotal style which makes for easy reading...a well-written work of narrative history...an impressive introductory account of the causes and effects of the worst banking crisis the world has seen so far."
Sunday Business Post -
"...a concise, lively study of the Depression..."
Time Out -
"...a good account of the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the resulting worldwide depression..."
Guardian -
"...highly readable, with rarely a page without some fresh anecdote...a real page-turner of a book."
Socialist