Few periods in history compare to the Great Depression. Stock market crashes, bread lines, bank runs, ad wild currency speculation were worldwide phenomena--all with the storm clouds of war gathering ominously in the background. Here Bernanke has gathered together his essays on why the Great Depression was so devastating and lasted so long. The essays in this volume present a uniquely coherent view of the economic causes and world-wide propagation of the depression.

From the Nobel Prize-winning economist and former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, a landmark book that provides vital lessons for understanding financial crises and their sometimes-catastrophic economic effects

As chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve during the Global Financial Crisis, Ben Bernanke helped avert a greater financial disaster than the Great Depression. And he did so by drawing directly on what he had learned from years of studying the causes of the economic catastrophe of the 1930s-work for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize. This influential work is collected in Essays on the Great Depression, an immensely influential account of the origins of the Depression and the economic lessons it teaches.