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SIX DAYS IN OCTOBER

THE STOCK MARKET CRASH OF 1929

A cogent account of the Stock Market Crash that occurred between October 24 and October 29, 1929, and ushered in the Great Depression. Blumenthal, the Dallas bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, carefully describes the many players, including Mike Meehan, the stockbroker who almost single-handedly made Radio Corporation of America the hottest property on the New York Stock Exchange; Richard Whitney, the vice-president of the Exchange, whose bold purchase of US Steel at $205 on Thursday failed to prevent the ultimate crash on Tuesday; and Albert Wiggin, the chairman of Chase National Bank, who, even as he attempted to rally the public’s confidence in the market, secretly sold shares in Chase short in the expectation of a decline and reaped a profit of $4 million. Sidebars explain such concepts as buying on margin, pools, and insider trading. Liberal quotation from contemporary sources such as newspapers and from memoirs of players both big and small contextualize the events and put a human face on the enormous complexity of the Crash. The overall look of the volume is striking: well-captioned archival photographs and other material appear on nearly every spread, and a ticker tape running across the bottom of the pages charts the market’s ups and downs from chapter to chapter. One major design flaw is the tendency of sidebars to interrupt the flow of the text, cutting in the middle of sentences at the page turns. The final product would also have been improved by the extension of the discussion into present-day market conditions as well as the inclusion of additional reading sources specifically for young people—the bibliography and notes consist of contemporary and adult materials. These quibbles aside, this offering is a solid exploration of an event whose importance is undisputed but which is rarely so lucidly explained for anyone, let alone young readers. (Nonfiction. 12+)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-689-84276-7

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002

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A QUEER HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

Though not the most balanced, an enlightening look back for the queer future.

An adaptation for teens of the adult title A Queer History of the United States (2011).

Divided into thematic sections, the text filters LGBTQIA+ history through key figures in each era from the 1500s to the present. Alongside watershed moments like the 1969 Stonewall uprising and the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, the text brings to light less well-known people, places, and events: the 1625 free love colony of Merrymount, transgender Civil War hero Albert D.J. Cashier, and the 1951 founding of the Mattachine Society, to name a few. Throughout, the author and adapter take care to use accurate pronouns and avoid imposing contemporary terminology onto historical figures. In some cases, they quote primary sources to speculate about same-sex relationships while also reminding readers of past cultural differences in expressing strong affection between friends. Black-and-white illustrations or photos augment each chapter. Though it lacks the teen appeal and personable, conversational style of Sarah Prager’s Queer, There, and Everywhere (2017), this textbook-level survey contains a surprising amount of depth. However, the mention of transgender movements and activism—in particular, contemporary issues—runs on the slim side. Whereas chapters are devoted to over 30 ethnically diverse gay, lesbian, bisexual, or queer figures, some trans pioneers such as Christine Jorgensen and Holly Woodlawn are reduced to short sidebars.

Though not the most balanced, an enlightening look back for the queer future. (glossary, photo credits, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 14-18)

Pub Date: June 11, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-8070-5612-7

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Beacon Press

Review Posted Online: March 12, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019

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A LITTLE HISTORY OF THE WORLD

Conversational, sometimes playful—not the sort of book that would survive vetting by school-system censors these days, but a...

A lovely, lively historical survey that takes in Neanderthals, Hohenzollerns and just about everything in between.

In 1935, Viennese publisher Walter Neurath approached Gombrich, who would go on to write the canonical, bestselling Story of Art, to translate a history textbook for young readers. Gombrich volunteered that he could do better than the authors, and Neurath accepted the challenge, provided that a completed manuscript was on his desk in six weeks. This book, available in English for the first time, is the happy result. Gombrich is an engaging narrator whose explanations are charming if sometimes vague. (Take the kid-friendly definition of truffles: “Truffles,” he says, “are a very rare and special sort of mushroom.” End of lesson.) Among the subjects covered are Julius Caesar (who, Gombrich exults, was able to dictate two letters simultaneously without getting confused), Charlemagne, the American Civil War, Karl Marx, the Paris Commune and Kaiser Wilhelm. As he does, he offers mostly gentle but pointed moralizing about the past, observing, for instance, that the Spanish conquest of Mexico required courage and cunning but was “so appalling, and so shaming to us Europeans that I would rather not say anything more about it,” and urging his young readers to consider that perhaps not all factory owners were as vile as Marx portrayed them to be, even though the good owners “against their conscience and their natural instincts, often found themselves treating their workers in the same way”—which is to say, badly.

Conversational, sometimes playful—not the sort of book that would survive vetting by school-system censors these days, but a fine conception and summarizing of the world’s checkered past for young and old.

Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2005

ISBN: 0-300-10883-4

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005

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