Once in Golconda

Occasionally a deep vein will appear in history, out of which bright personalities and their drives are reflected and magnified in the gaze of historians and journalists. One such place was New York's business society in the 1920's. Award-winning writer John Brooks writes of a time not unlike the present; doubtless few readers of Once in Golconda will fail to miss the similarities. The vast wealth inside the New York Stock exchange was territory for insiders whose missteps led them into speculative darkness, ever fewer options awaiting at each turn. His writing is succinct and colorful--masterful. He keeps one mesmerized by the descriptions of such men, specifically Richard Whitney, on track to a convergence of ambition and panic we all know as the great crash of 1929. This book appeals to anyone eager to refract recent readings on the recession, willing to examine a loss of inheritance at several angles, and inclined to see that everything connects.