This shelf lists 24 legally free classics books. Sources include Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive (library-digitised scan). Every link goes to the official publisher or library page, and each link was checked on 16 Oct 2026.
Last updated 16 Oct 2026 · 24 books
Charles Mackay's 1841 study of mass manias, including the Dutch tulip craze, the Mississippi Scheme and the South Sea Bubble. A classic warning about how crowds lose their heads over money.
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Banker Henry Clews looks back on half a century on Wall Street: the panics, the speculators and famous figures like Jay Gould and Commodore Vanderbilt.
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Harper's short follow-up to The Psychology of Speculation, written after the October–November 1929 crash. It reflects on what the collapse taught investors.
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Walter Bagehot's 1873 explanation of how the London money market and the Bank of England work. It gave central banks the rule to lend freely during a panic.
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Charles Duguid explains in plain terms how the London Stock Exchange works: its members, dealings, settlement and the language of the market.
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A New York Stock Exchange member describes how the exchange works from the inside and defends its role in the economy.
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John Francis's 19th-century history of the London Stock Exchange covers the national debt, famous panics and the colourful characters of the market.
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A short history of France's paper-money (assignat) experiment during the Revolution and the runaway inflation that followed.
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Future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis exposes how a small group of investment bankers controlled other people's money in early-1900s America.
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John Maynard Keynes argues, writing after World War I, for stable domestic prices over a rigid gold standard. It is an early statement of his monetary ideas.
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Keynes's first book (1913) analyses India's currency system and its move toward a gold-exchange standard.
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Hartley Withers explains how international finance works: how capital moves between countries, and the role of London as a financial centre.
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Adam Smith's 1776 founding work of economics. It covers the division of labour, markets, money, trade and the 'invisible hand'.
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F. Straker traces the history of England's banking system and the London money market, from its origins to the early 20th century.
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Thomas W. Lawson's insider exposé of the Amalgamated Copper affair and the stock-market practices of turn-of-the-century high finance.
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A memoir by promoter George Graham Rice of mining-stock speculation in the Goldfield, Nevada boom. It is a revealing look at how speculative promotions worked.
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NYSE president H. G. S. Noble's account of why the exchange closed when World War I broke out in 1914 and how it reopened.
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A collection of readings on money, banking and currency compiled as a companion text for economics students.
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An early-20th-century textbook explaining the principles and practical problems of banking, with a focus on the United States.
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W. A. Shaw's history of gold and silver currencies in Europe and America from 1252 to 1896.
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Benjamin M. Anderson's economic treatise on what gives money its value and how that value changes.
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A history of the Bank of England and its influence on English banking and the money market.
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A 19th-century biography of financier Jay Gould, 'the Wizard of Wall Street', and his railroad and market dealings.
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Sereno S. Pratt explains how Wall Street worked: the stock exchange, brokers, banks and the money market.
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