Book excerpt: The stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression did not occur in a vacuum: their roots lie in economic events that occurred over the previous ten years. This book performs a financial autopsy on the "speculative decade" from 1919 to 1929, exploring the ruinous aftermath of World War I-in which war debts were contested and battles over reparations set the stage for a difficult international monetary situation-as well as the natural waxing and waning of economic cycles and the processes and procedures of stock exchanges that contributed to disaster. Written by a lawyer and emphasizing a legal perspective on the workings of a complex economy, this classic work of high finance offers a unique panorama on an important era of American history that is often overlooked. BARNIE F. WINKELMAN (b. 1894) also wrote Modern Chess (1931) and John D Rockefeller (1937), among other books.