Thursday, 24 Oct. 1929 was termed a 'disaster' for US stocks. But on Monday, the real disaster began...

FAIRLY SUBTITLED "the classic study of that disaster", Professor Galbraith's world-famous history of the Great Crash starting in Oct. 1929 shows why he was one of the best explainers of economics ever known.

   This book is a narrative story, through the inflation of the 1920s' bubble, the first pop, and then the long grind of the aftermath. There's some hard data, but not so much that you tire of it. Rather, it's a reflection of the way apparently sensible people get caught out by easy money.

   Galbraith was writing 20 years after the event, with a mild detachment which sometimes bubbles over into poking fun at people we can be reasonably sure were not trying to lose their money. And of course, it's much easier to see it when you're not in the bubble in question.

   But this book is certainly capable of making the canny modern-day investor look over his shoulder and ask if he's doing anything which some future Galbraith – and several million readers – will chuckle at.