Two books sat on my reading list for very different reasons. Both ended up teaching me the same lesson.

The Great Depression: A Diary by Benjamin Roth is a quiet, intimate account—a lawyer in Youngstown, Ohio, documenting his observations and financial decisions from 1929 through the 1940s. His diary entries are remarkable for their immediacy and honesty.

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History by Andrew Ross Sorkin is the opposite in style—sweeping, cinematic, and meticulously researched. The #1 New York Times bestseller brings to life the greed, euphoria, and human folly that led to an era-defining collapse, told through the larger-than-life characters who drove the boom and then watched it all unravel.

Together, they offer something no single account could: both the bird’s-eye view of the crash and the ground-level human cost of it.

What struck me most from both wasn’t the scale of collapse—stocks fell 89%