Where We Came In

the action while the text flounders in stuttering irrelevance. At any turning of the plot, which is contrived to be rendered in the sternest Realism, wild details from Russian folk tales slip in and embarrassing miracles blossom. Tertz has been compared to George Orwell; his true masters seem to be Aesop and Nikolai Gogol. Aesop, we remember, was a slave and had the cunning of a man who learns to speak out of the side of his mouth. Gogol knew the basic humanity of the Russian people and never tired of wondering at their ambiguous capacity to denounce and embrace humbug both at once. Whatever the anguish of the man who calls himself Abram Tertz, he must be aware of the fussy shade of Gogol looking over his shoulder, smiling and grinding his teeth.

Dr. Patterson avoids drawing historical parallels. He writes history focused on the stock market, with emphasis on its “human” aspects— the behavior of groups and individuals—as well as on its operational techniques. It is an informal history for the benefit of the general reader; the underlying economic and political problems are relegated to the background. But time and again they break out, as it were, from under this imposed limitation. As a history, the book is the unbiased product of thoroughgoing research. The lucid virtually day-to-day presentation of the critical weeks and months provides dramatic tension without the kind of over-dramatization of, for example, J. K. Galbraith’s The Great Crash, 1929.

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Melchior Palyi

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the action while the text flounders in stuttering irrelevance. At any turning of the plot, which is contrived to be rendered in the sternest Realism, wild details from Russian folk tales slip in and embarrassing miracles blossom. Tertz has been compared to George Orwell; his true masters seem to be Aesop and Nikolai Gogol. Aesop, we remember, was a slave and had the cunning of a man who learns to speak out of the side of his mouth. Gogol knew the basic humanity of the Russian people and never tired of wondering at their ambiguous capacity to denounce and embrace humbug both at once. Whatever the anguish of the man who calls himself Abram Tertz, he must be aware of the fussy shade of Gogol looking over his shoulder, smiling and grinding his teeth.

Dr. Patterson avoids drawing historical parallels. He writes history focused on the stock market, with emphasis on its “human” aspects— the behavior of groups and individuals—as well as on its operational techniques. It is an informal history for the benefit of the general reader; the underlying economic and political problems are relegated to the background. But time and again they break out, as it were, from under this imposed limitation. As a history, the book is the unbiased product of thoroughgoing research. The lucid virtually day-to-day presentation of the critical weeks and months provides dramatic tension without the kind of over-dramatization of, for example, J. K. Galbraith’s The Great Crash, 1929.