"The definitive account of the crash of 1987, a cautionary tale of how the U.S. financial system nearly collapsed ... Monday, October 19, 1987, was by far the worst day in Wall Street history. The market fell 22.6 percent--almost twice as bad as the worst day of 1929--equal to a loss of nearly...

"Davies's book examines the financial panics of 1873, considering both the financial speculations born of exuberance that led to these panics and the interpretative speculations born of the crises, and exploring what this in turn reveals about contemporary notions of the world economy and...

Introduction -- The legacy of Napoleon: embargo, war, and peace -- Three revolutions: market, transportation, corporation -- Volcano weather -- Alabama fever: "I must go West and plant" -- Bank expansion: "frothy bubbles" -- Bank contraction: "the axe must be applied to the root of the evil" --...