The Crash

This book has had a most curious origin. A week after Wack Som day, I met Kathy Rooney, an editor at Bloomsbury, for lunch Kay and I had been talking for almost a year about a book I wanted s write, and the lunch was meant to sort out a few ideas Pot, as often happens, we hardly talked about that, instead the Crash dominated our conversation. I ended up paying for the lunch and agreeing to write a book about the events surrounding Black Monday If it is dangerous to let publishers buy you lunch, it is fatal when you buy them lunch.
John Kenneth Galbraith has said that writing The Great Crack of 1929 was a joy. The research was done under the ornate Orosco murals of the Baker Library at Dartmouth College and when he tired of writing, or of the extravagant murals, there was a walk in New England sunshine and a Martini lunch at the Hanover Inn. I do not have Professor Galbraith's credentials, let alone his power over markets. A month before his book appeared, his testimony to the US Congress about the effects of the 1929 Crash wiped off $3 billion in value from the New York stock exchange. All that has happened while I have been writing the book has been that England has very nearly withdrawn from a Test tour because of a row with an umpire. And while some of my friends think the implications of this are more important than that of the Crash,