part 1. America discovers the modern: The jazz age ; Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and Insull ; And then came Ford ; Transformations : New York City ; The view from below : Muncie, Indiana ; Dislocations -- part 2. "One heckuva boom": Trickle-down economics ; From war to prosperity ; Electrifying Chicago ; David Buick, Billy Durant, Alfred Sloan, and the modern car industry ; What happened to Ford? ; A productivity bonanza ; Spinoffs ; Laggards : agriculture ; Laggards : real estate ; On the eve of the crash -- part 3. The crash in the United States: New York Stock Exchange ; The rise of Herbert Hoover ; Charting the fall ; The worm's eye view ; The banking crises of the Great Depression ; The twilight of the gods I : Insull ; The twilight of the gods II : Kreuger -- part 4. Blood, gold, and unpaid debts: Entanglements ; The gold standard ; Germany, 1919-1925 : vengeance, reparations, and war debts ; The Dawes and Young plans ; England, 1919-1925 : Churchill (sort of) chooses resumption ; The French rollercoaster ; The end of cooperation ; Germany unravels ; The golden jihad ; Getting what you wish for -- part 5. Roosevelt, reflation, and recovery: World Monetary & Economic Conference ; Devaluing the dollar ; Creating the "New Deal" ; The New Deal in overview ; The New Deal in detail ; The rest of the New Deal : a roundup ; Econometric analyses ; Catastrophe ; The unemployment conundrum ; The great lap forward -- part 6. The geology of the collapses ; The legacy of war ; The big picture ; The details ; A postscript to the reader.