The Great Depression: A Diary
A lawyer's day-by-day record of the 1930s, written with no idea it was economics
Benjamin Roth practiced law in Youngstown, Ohio, and wrote down what he saw around him through the 1930s. His son published the notebooks decades later. The value is the missing hindsight. Roth records what people believed about stocks, jobs and banks at each point, including how many years passed before the recovery felt real to anyone living through it. Readers take it as a record of behavior during a long downturn rather than as an explanation of one.
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Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.
- Morgan HouselRecommends
Writer · The Psychology of Money
Among his favorite books, and by his reckoning the best economics book ever written. The author was a lawyer keeping a diary through the Depression, not an economist, and Benjamin Roth's son published it later. He points to a 1932 entry as one of the things that pushed him toward Same as Ever.
Source: The Tim Ferriss Show: Morgan Housel on Contrarian Money and Writing Advice (#702)
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