America's First Great Depression: Economic Crisis and Political Disorder after the Panic of 1837

Abstract

Alasdair Roberts has written a concise and commendably readable book that shows clearly and well just how devastating the Panic of 1837 was for the United States. His study substantiates the claim that the Panic was a great depression, though as we learn more about the catastrophic impact of the American Revolution, it may not come to be viewed as the nation’s first. In his introduction and conclusion Roberts also provides a timely discussion of the nation’s economic life in a global system in which, going forward, Americans should not expect to have the authority or control that they learned to take for granted during the last fifty years of the previous century.