In the 1920s, Wall Street was a world that was really dominated by professional speculators and stock pools. These people had a monopoly over information.

I have developed a very strong partiality for the dead: they don't talk back, they don't sue, and they don't have angry relatives.

A crash really occurs when you suddenly have a violent downturn in the market that then heralds a long bull market.

In the 1920s you could buy stocks on margin. You could put 10 percent down and borrow the rest against your stocks.

Mutual fund managers are trapped in this rather deadly vicious circle: the more successful they are, the more money flows into their mutual fund. Then, it is more difficult for them to beat the market averages or even to match their own past performance.

I'm dubious about having Social Security put into the stock market. I think that we have gotten very far away from the idea that there's something sacrosanct about retirement investments.

The richly cadenced prose is hypnotic, the research prodigious, the analysis acute, the mood spellbinding, and the cast of characters mythic in scale. I cannot conceive of a better book about Capitol Hill. An unforgettable, epic achievement in the art of biography.