The Great Depression: A Diary by Benjamin Roth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was recommended as a book of the week on Consuela Mack's Wealthtrack show on my local PBS station.
Benjamin Roth was a lawyer with a sole proprietorship practice in Youngstown, Ohio and the sole provider for his young family. He kept a diary about the hard times and the developments as a way to understand and to learn from it. This book feels so current as he writes about his own worries about cashflow and bewilderment about government policies. These are real concerns for us today: have we done all we could to protect our families;would market timing and portfolio allocation have made an difference; and if we made mistakes how can we correct them if cash is unavailable? I did not realize how risky real estate investment became during the Great Depression when rents could not be collected and yet property taxes were still due.
I highly recommend this.


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