The story of the 1920s is in large part a story about money. After a few slow years at the start of the decade, money began to flow through many, though not all, people's hands. The flow continued right up until those fateful few days near the end of 1929, when it suddenly stopped. After the seemingly endless prosperity of the previous years, the stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression (the period of economic downturn and hardship that would last until the beginning of World War II; 1939–45) came as a great surprise to almost everybody. A few sharp observers had predicted that the good times of the Roaring Twenties were too good to last, that certain practices and attitudes popular during the decade could lead to disaster. But while...