A.M. Sakolski

While the stock market rose dramatically throughout the 1920s, thousands of average Americans became millionaires at a time when a new car Model T Ford cost only four hundred dollars. No one imagined that it would all come crashing down in 1929, except perhaps, A.M. Sakolski, assistant professor of finance at the College of the City of New York.

Sakolski observed the Florida land-boom hysteria between 1924 and 1926 firsthand, and wrote about what can happen when speculation, greed, and a frenzy for profits overtake reality in the marketplace. While thousands of "get-richquick" investors were wiped out by the Florida land boom and bust, it was only a small precursor to the crash that would follow.

How did it start? No one can give a completely satisfactory answer. Yet its origin is not a mystery! For several decades Florida was...