In this absorbing, smart, and accessible mixture of economic and cultural history in the vein from the works of Michael Lewis and Andrew Ross Sorkin, a financial professional and CNBC contributor examines the five most crucial stock market crashes in the United States over the past century, revealing how they have defined the country today.

THE PANIC OF 1907; BLACK TUESDAY (1929); Dark MONDAY (1987); THE FANTASTIC RECESSION (2008); THE Display CRASH (2010): Each one of these economic implosions that triggered about A Background of america in Five Crashes: Stock Market Meltdowns That Defined a Country a catastrophic drop in the American currency markets is an extraordinary story in its own right. But used together, they offer a unique financial history of the American hundred years. In A BRIEF HISTORY of the United States in Five Crashes, financial professional and CNBC contributor Scott Nations examines these precipitous dips, revealing how each performed a job in America’s politics and ethnic fabric, one building upon the next to create the country we know today.

Scott Nations identifies the factors behind the devastating runs on banks that resulted in the Anxiety of 1907, the first great scare from the twentieth century. He points out why 1920s America adopted expense trusts-a practice that helped post-World Battle I Britain-and how they were a primary catalyst from the 1929 crash. He explores America’s romance with an expanding currency markets in the 1980s-which spawned the birth of collection insurance that considerably contributed towards the 1987 crash. And he examines the elements that led to the 2008 global meltdown, and the rise of algorithmic trading, the present day financial technology that sparked the 2010 Display Crash when American stocks dropped a trillion dollars in moments.

A BRIEF HISTORY of america in Five Crashes clearly and compellingly illustrates the contacts between these monetary collapses and examines the solid, clear-cut lessons they offer for preventing the next one.