America's Great Depression

Murray Rothbard is one of the Austrian Economists who Rep. Ron Paul puts on his reading list. This book is very technical and requires a lot of concentration to truly understand the causes of the depression and what prolonged the depression.

This book gives an excellent account of causes of the great depression in the 20s. It uncovers banker's corruption, moral suasion, and secrets of Cal and Harding's presidency. There are unfortunately many similarities between the greenspan/bernanke fed and the fed of the 20's.

This book should be required reading for every person elected to our congress.

Excellent book, but not for someone looking for a biographical history filled with famous personalities or a social history looking back at everyday life during a time of 25% unemployment. This is an economic history. It is recommended for anyone who would like a detailed anaylisis of how federal monetary policy errors can cause false booms by expanding the credit money supply, leading eventually to inevitable recessionary or depressionary corrections. It also explores how Keynesian fiscal policy tends to exacerbate and extend these periods of correction. Interesting, if for no other reason than this cycle of inflationary boom and recession/depression is still with us, and the same disproven tactics are still used as treatments. Anyone interested in the history of banking, finance or economics will probably find this a good read.

A classic work on how the initiation of violence caused the great depression and suffocated any recovery. Unfortunately read rather fast for the complexity of the subject matter and the amount of detailed data. If you are not very familiar with economic terms, it might go a bit fast and I would recommend the paper version.

Very boring and technical

I might give another chance.

No I would not

No changes at all.

Its very technical it reads like a text book.

I bought this book thinking it would be a history of the Great Depression, and it turned out to be an extremely detailed analysis of Keynesian economics and how this prolongs "panics" into "depressions." I shifted expectation gears and forced myself to continue listening and found it to be quite informative, and, by chance, it happily followed my reading of Buckley's God And Man At Yale, in which Buckley also criticizes Keynesian economics.

Economics is normally a boring subject, but Austrian School economics tells the truth about everything. If you want to truly understand our money and what's going on you should listen to this book. I would also recommend Rothbard's other books, like What has Government Done to our Money. Richard R., Toronto

The first half of the book has some great gems for understanding our economic condition but you have to wade through way too much detailed economic analysis for it to be worthwhile for the average reader. The second half is more historical and more interesting and understandable for everyone not trained in economic theory. If you want the short version go to Ron Paul's End the Fed and you will get an interesting and easily understood version of a similar message. If you want online print versions of Austrian economic theory go to the Mises Institute online.

I pride myself as a economic theory geek, but this was beyond anyone's ability to digest. The first two chapters simply dont contain any events, characters or real life facts. Instead, a robotic voice tells you the relationship between the savings curb and the investment curb in a deflationary environment. Then a lot of these dry axioms are repeated in different words 2-3 times, as if the author is struggling to fill up time.
All these theories are presented as gospel, no point and counterpoint, and there are no real life examples of how they apply.

About one third in the book, you start getting characters, presidents from the 30ties and other officials. The same theories start repeating, but now there are some events and people put them in practice.

A very strange book, I just could not bear it...

I thaught this would be a simple expliantion on the major causes of the gret depression. It was more like a doctorial thesis. I might read this book, but listening to it is extremely difficult. It's way too complicated to passively listen to. Your always losing track of the details. It may be a good reference book for school.

If you supported Ron Paul then this is the book for you otherwise skip this one and read (The Global Impact of the Great Depression, 1929-1939) it is A far better book and does not seek to make the U.S. Government out to be the Great Satan.

Pastmasterbd