Books for the Recession

The other day, all this doom and gloom about the financial crisis was getting a bit too much for me. It was a beautiful sunny day and I’d had enough of banks going bust, falling property prices, talk of unemployment and general fear, uncertainty and doubt wherever you looked in the press, broadcast media and online. So, I thought, what better way to cheer me up and distract myself than to find some good books to read — maybe a good old-fashioned story to warm the cockles of my heart or a rollicking thrill to keep me on the edge of my seat, or even a history book that will take me back to another simpler time.

However, as I scanned my bookshelves, looking for that good book to distract me, my mind was still busy with phrases that it was still processing from the news: “Depression”, “Wall Street”, “greedy bankers”, “speculation”, “financial bubble”… and my hand was guided to 3 books that are no distraction at all in the current climate!

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck — I read this many years ago and my memory of it is strongly influenced by the John Ford black-and-white movie starring Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. Set during the Depression, it is the story of the Joad family who have lost their farm due to the drought in Oklahoma and along with thousands of other destitute farmers, “Okies”, they head to California looking for work. All their worldly possessions is piled onto the back of an old truck and their journey west takes them from desperate squatter camp to desperate squatter camp across the Dust Bowl landscape of Depression-era America. It is haunting, dark and depressing.

The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe — this is a great satire of high capitalism during the 1980s and if by the end of The Grapes of Wrath you are deflated, beaten and downtrodden, this book will give you your cynical, hard edge back. Investment banker Sherman McCoy, “Master of the Universe “, heads for a fall from grace and fortune when, driving through New York one night with his mistress, he takes a wrong turn and ends up in the Bronx. This book was also made into a film, like the Steinbeck book, this time starring Tom Hanks but the movie is a much weaker affair losing much of the political and social bite of the novel. If you want to experience a bit of Schadenfreude in the unravelling of an arrogant, greedy banker, then now is the time to read this one.

Tulipomania by Mike Dash - I read this book earlier this year, semi-inspired by a visit to be charming Dutch town of Delft last summer. It is a very readable historical account of the tulip fever that obsessed Holland in the 1630s. No, tulip fever is not an illness like swamp fever. Rather, it was the obsession with buying and selling tulip bulbs that gripped Dutch society four centuries ago - much like house fever, that obsession with buying and selling property that has gripped the UK, US and other developed nations in recent years. The Dutch back then coveted beautiful tulips, a plant that was new to the West at that time, having been brought over from Turkey and the near East. The plants that were the most desired were those that had unusual colouring and unique patterns. Tulip bulbs take a long time to mature so this desire for the plant evolved into a desire for the bulbs, in the anticipation that those bulbs would eventually bloom into a unique prize flower. The trade developed within little over a year into a trade for futures in tulip bulbs with people selling bulbs that they had not yet taken delivery of and others buying the opportunity to sell on that future blossoming plant. The mania reached such a peak that people were selling their houses to buy a single tulip bulb! It all fell apart one morning when a seller offered his bulbs up and there was a deathly silence from all the other traders in the room — for some reason, the desire was no longer there. Uh-oh. Within a day or so everyone was rushing to sell with no one there to buy. Fortunes were lost and lives were ruined. The governing authorities had to step in with bailout plans. Hmm, sound familiar?