This book is my first real in depth look at the role of national banking policies in the spiral from the end of WW1 to the depression and the economic rise of Nazi Germany. Americans, British, French, and German financial leaders made astonishingly bad decisions compounded by worse decisions by their political taskmasters. The gold standard appears to be the root of many of the problems they faced, but even that skims the surface of deepseated problems in the nature of money and how government manipulates it to improve employment, economy, and international advantage. ( )

All about the roaring 20s, lead up to the depression and then the crash. focuses on the 4 big bankers from us, uk, france and Germany. very pro-Keynes and anti-gold standard. I am not knowledgeable enough to know if this is "biased" or not... good story, too much biography. ( )

Long and not very convincing

This is a good overview about the causes and consequences of the Great Depression.

But it has some problems.

First, it focuses on the life of 4 men that, back then, were the central bankers of the 4 most influential countries on Earth. But, despite the author's effort, these were not really very interesting people.

Second, the author's thesis is that these 4 bankers were responsible for the crash because they failed to respond adequately to the successive crisis. But the author himself exhaustively describes the economic difficulties the western war faced after the World and how the governments of the US, Britain, France and Germany were unable to work together to solve them. So, at the end, these 4 bankers weren't as central to the Crisis as the author suggest (which makes focusing on them even more irrelevant). ( )

The Lords of Finance covers the economists and bankers of the four major nation in the early decades of the 1900's, and how their decisions may have contributed to the Great Depression in the U.S. and worldwide. It was interesting to see how much was not understood, and how the post WWI policies and war reparations impacted Germany leading up to WWII. ( )

nonfiction (economics/history WWI and after)
This is probably really interesting if you are into economics; I usually enjoy ('enjoy' is maybe too strong a word) thoroughly researched books on topics I know too little about, but I found this mundane--lots of little details about people whose names I'll never remember. I did pick up on some of the big ideas, but at page 198 I decided to call it quits. ( )