From the Nobel Prize–winning economist and former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, a landmark book that provides vital lessons for understanding financial crises and their sometimes-catastrophic economic effects As chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve during the Global Financial Crisis, Ben Bernanke helped avert a greater financial disaster than the Great Depression. And he did so by drawing directly on what he had learned from years of studying the causes of the economic catastrophe of the 1930s—work for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize. Essays on the Great Depression brings together Bernanke’s influential work on the origins and economic lessons of the Depression, and this new edition also includes his Nobel Prize lecture.

Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) was one of the most original and influential philosophers of our time. Born in Cologne, Germany, he studied at the University of Vienna, where he became a professor of political science in the Faculty of Law. In 1938, he and his wife, fleeing Hitler, immigrated to the United States. They became American citizens in 1944. Voegelin spent much of his career at Louisiana State University, the University of Munich, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. During his lifetime he published many books and more than one hundred articles. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin will make available in a uniform edition all of Voegelin's major writings. In some thirty-four volumes the Collected Works will include the monumental, never-before-published History of Political Ideas; important published essays not previously collected in book form or published only in German; previously unpublished essays; selected correspondence; translations of seven books, four of them never before available in English; and the five-volume Order and History.

Friedman and Schwartz's A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, published in 1963, stands as one of the most influential economics books of the twentieth century. A landmark achievement, the book marshaled massive historical data and sharp analytics to support the claim that monetary policy--steady control of the money supply--matters profoundly in the management of the nation's economy, especially in navigating serious economic fluctuations. The chapter entitled "The Great Contraction, 1929-33" addressed the central economic event of the century, the Great Depression. Published as a stand-alone paperback in 1965, The Great Contraction, 1929-1933 argued that the Federal Reserve could have stemmed the severity of the Depression, but failed to exercise its role of managing the monetary system and ameliorating banking panics. The book served as a clarion call to the monetarist school of thought by emphasizing the importance of the money supply in the functioning of the economy--a concept that has come to inform the actions of central banks worldwide. This edition of the original text includes a new preface by Anna Jacobson Schwartz, as well as a new introduction by the economist Peter Bernstein. It also reprints comments from the current Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, originally made on the occasion of Milton Friedman's 90th birthday, on the enduring influence of Friedman and Schwartz's work and vision.

Annotation In this collection of essays, which covers the years from 1934 to 1939, we see Eric Voegelin in the role of both scholar and public intellectual in Vienna until he was forced to flee the Nazi terror that descended on Austria in 1938. These essays encompass a broad spectrum of topics, ranging from Austrian politics, Austrian constitutional history, and European racism, to questions of the formation and expression of public opinion, theories of administrative law, and the role of political science in public university education. Several essays serve as useful commentaries on, elaborations of, or synopses of arguments Voegelin made in the four books he had published between 1928 and 1936. These essays will be of interest to a wide range of scholars, including constitutional historians, historians of political science, political theorists, and students of Voegelin's later work.