This book is an 'historical document' and explains Booms and Depressions from the point of view and analysis of a highly respected American economist of the twentieth century who has lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s.Fisher writes: "This book grew out of an invitation to speak on the Depression of 1929-32 before the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is an elaboration of my address at the meeting of the Association, held at New Orleans, Jan. 1, 1932.The vast field of "business cycles" is one on which I had scarcecly ever entered before, and I had never attempted to analyze it as a whole.The scope of the present work is restricted, for the most part, to the role of nine main factors, not because they cover the whole subject, but because they include what seem to me to be the outstanding influences in the present, as well as in most, if not all, other major depressions…"