I saw this book at a local library and I set it back down. [0]

> Beyond the intrinsic difficulty of revivifying the top-hatted dead, Sorkin’s rendition is limited by his desire to frame 1929 as a story about people. His focus on individuals comes at the expense of analysis—particularly of the deeper economic forces that made the crash likely, if not inevitable. Sorkin is more interested in how the crisis felt than why it happened. He has little to say about why the government failed to take any meaningful steps to prevent it—or why, unlike in 2008, its responses failed so spectacularly.

Emphasis added.

The review here seems intent on filling in the gaps it finds the author to have left himself.

This one reads more critically:

"1929: Sorkin Rounds Up the Usual Suspects"

> [...] Sorkin stages morality play rather than history. He also helps set policymakers up for the kind of grand theatrical action they are inclined to take anyhow whenever markets turn down. In other words, another 1933- or 2008-style rescue: flooding the market with liquidity, and stringing up wrongdoers and even the better Wall Streeters, such as the Mitchells whom Sorkin seeks to rehab. The same subpar results are likely to follow.

[...]

> Were 1929 a documentary produced by Michael Moore, its suggestions would not matter. We are accustomed to illogic in television. But 1929 presents itself as the researched book Sorkin wants it to be. It therefore claims the authority that such books can carry.

> Sorkin quotes H. G. Wells, who called human history “a race between education and catastrophe.” Indeed, indeed. But for education to beat catastrophe, that education must be a little more thorough.

https://www.coolidgereview.com/articles/1929-crash-sorkin

[0]: I was returning Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations by Walter Lacquer (1990). I found its research and ensuing narrative worth the effort.

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History