1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

Carter Glass, a long-serving Democratic senator from Virginia, is the primary political antagonist to Wall Street in Sorkin’s narrative. As a co-architect of both the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and the landmark Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, Glass provides the story’s policy throughline, representing the argument for structural reform of the American banking system. An austere and relentless critic of financial speculation, Glass embodies the political conviction that public rules must be established to discipline the excesses of private finance.

A former newspaper publisher, Glass used his platform to wage a public war against what he saw as the corruption of the financial markets. He famously coined the term “Mitchellism” to describe the speculative practices championed by National City Bank chairman Charles E. Mitchell, framing the debate in starkly personal terms. Sorkin presents Glass’s fiery rhetoric and persistent pressure for congressional hearings as the key political force that translated the anger over the crash into a concrete legislative agenda. His vilification of Wall Street’s leaders helped create the public mandate for the Pecora investigations, to vindicate his long-held concerns.

Glass’s legacy is cemented in the banking reforms that bear his name. He was the foremost advocate for the legal separation of commercial banking from the securities business, an idea that forms a core theme of the book. By tracing his decades-long crusade, Sorkin illustrates how the architecture of modern financial regulation was born from the institutional failures of the 1920s. Despite this, 1929 avoids heroizing Glass, making explicit his abrasive and difficult personality, and his racist political views. The book uses Glass’s triumph over the more personable Mitchell as an exploration of differing moral codes, and as a means to create pathos for Mitchell’s downfall.

As the 31st President of the United States, Herbert Hoover was in office during the 1929 crash and the initial years of the Great Depression, coining that phrase. Sorkin portrays him as a complex and tragic figure whose leadership style was ill-suited to the crisis he faced. An engineer by training, Hoover approached the economic collapse with a technocratic optimism, favoring voluntary cooperation among business leaders and limited federal intervention. In the narrative, he serves as a crucial point of contrast to Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal.

Positioned between the boom and bust of 1928-29, Hoover confronted the initial market panic, the subsequent banking runs, and the escalating international debt crisis of 1931 with his belief in preserving the existing financial structures. His primary policy responses, such as establishing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) to provide emergency credit to banks and corporations, were designed to stabilize rather than fundamentally reform the system. This approach put him at odds with reformers like Carter Glass, who argued that only a structural breakup of financial institutions could prevent a future crisis.

1929 presents Hoover as a leader whose deeply held principles of self-reliance and limited government were overwhelmed by the scale of the economic catastrophe. In Sorkin’s telling, Hoover’s presidency is a case study in the limits of a particular philosophy of governance when confronted with a systemic collapse of confidence.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), the 32nd President of the US, is renowned for his decisive shift from the cautious policies of the Hoover administration to a new era of assertive, state-led intervention. Elected in a landslide in 1932, his arrival in Washington marks the climax of the book’s arc, moving from financial crash to comprehensive, corrective policy. As Governor of New York, Roosevelt had a front-row seat to the failures of Wall Street, incentivizing him to pursue emergency action upon taking office.

Sorkin presents FDR’s first days in office as a period of dramatic crisis management, bringing in the Emergency Banking Act. Roosevelt’s methodology is shown to be as important as his policies; he pioneered the use of “fireside chats” on the radio to speak directly to the American people, explaining his actions and successfully rebuilding public trust in the financial system. Roosevelt’s legacy is defined in 1929 by the lasting institutional architecture he created. He oversaw the passage of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial and investment banking, the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). These reforms established the foundations of modern American financial regulation, institutionalizing transparency and federal oversight. In Sorkin’s narrative, FDR fundamentally reshaped the relationship between government and finance.

Thomas W. Lamont, a senior partner at J.P. Morgan & Co., personifies the immense power and prestige of Wall Street’s old guard in the years leading up to the crash. A former journalist who rose to become one of the world’s most influential bankers, Lamont bridged the worlds of private finance and international diplomacy. Sorkin uses him to represent the established order, a figure who believed in banker-led stabilization and the moral authority of the financial elite, only to see that authority crumble under public scrutiny.

Lamont plays a pivotal role in the dramatic events of Black Thursday, October 24, 1929. As panic swept the market, he convened the “Big Six” of Wall Street banking to form a support pool, a private backstop intended to restore order. This moment, reminiscent of J. Pierpont Morgan’s intervention in 1907, is depicted as the last great stand of private power. Lamont’s advocacy for confidence-building measures, rather than punitive interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, illustrates the prevailing philosophy within Wall Street’s inner circle.

Lamont’s story is used to illuminate the changing world of 1929. While he and his partners saw themselves as responsible stewards of the financial system, the Pecora hearings recast their actions in a more critical light, exposing insider practices and the immense, unchecked influence of firms like Morgan. Lamont’s fall from grace underscores a central theme of the book: The Tensions Between Private and Public Stakeholder Interests.

Ferdinand Pecora, chief counsel for the Senate Banking and Currency Committee, is the narrative’s driving force for public accountability and retribution. His methodical and often theatrical investigation into the causes of the Wall Street crash turned abstract financial failures into a compelling public drama of greed and misconduct. As a former prosecutor, Pecora brought a forensic investigator’s mindset to the hearings. His confrontations with figures like Charles Mitchell and the partners of J.P. Morgan created sensational headlines and made the complex workings of finance understandable to the American public. Sorkin highlights how Pecora’s intention to create a clear public narrative of wrongdoing was as significant as the facts he uncovered, presenting his actions as a driver for the socio-political will leading to the sweeping reforms of the New Deal.

His legacy is the legislative transformation that followed. The “Pecora hearings” provided the direct impetus for the Securities Act of 1933 and the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which established new standards for disclosure and federal oversight. The revelations also reinforced the momentum for the Glass-Steagall Act, cementing the separation of commercial and investment banking.

Jesse Livermore, the famous and enigmatic speculator known as the “Boy Plunger,” is used by Sorkin as an archetype of the individualistic, tape-driven trading culture that amplified the market’s volatility in the 1920s. His career, marked by spectacular fortunes made and lost, provides Sorkin with a narrative lens through which to explore crowd psychology, the power of momentum, and the inherent dangers of unregulated speculation. His rise from Boston’s illicit “bucket shops” to Wall Street celebrity exemplifies the era’s fascination with the lone operator who could outwit the market.

Livermore’s story is used to illustrate the behavioral dynamics of the boom and bust. His short selling in 1929 highlight its underlying fragility and the feedback loop between rumors, media, and trading activity. Ultimately, his life serves as a cautionary tale. Despite his genius for reading the market, Livermore’s reliance on immense leverage and his battles with overconfidence led to his eventual ruin. He died by suicide in 1940. His personal trajectory of highs and lows personifies the book’s narrative of wider boom-and-bust socio-economics.