Essays on the Great Depression

From the Nobel Prize-winning economist and former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, a landmark book that provides vital lessons for understanding financial crises and their sometimes-catastrophic economic effects

As chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve during the Global Financial Crisis, Ben Bernanke helped avert a greater financial disaster than the Great Depression. And he did so by drawing directly on what he had learned from years of studying the causes of the economic catastrophe of the 1930s--work for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize. Essays on the Great Depression brings together Bernanke’s influential work on the origins and economic lessons of the Depression, and this new edition also includes his Nobel Prize lecture.

Ben S. Bernanke was chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2022. He is a Distinguished Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. His many books include The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis (Princeton).