The Land Boomers
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In the feverish decades of the 1880s, Melbourne was gripped by one of the most audacious speculative frenzies the world had ever witnessed — a land boom of staggering proportions that transformed a colonial city into a labyrinth of debt, delusion, and dazzling ambition. The Land Boomers chronicles the rise and catastrophic fall of the speculators, financiers, and opportunists who gambled fortunes on inflated real estate, constructing an empire of paper wealth that would ultimately crash with devastating consequences in the 1890s depression. Michael Cannon presents a meticulously researched narrative populated by a cast of real historical figures — the audacious promoters, the reckless bankers, and the ordinary citizens swept up in a tide of collective greed — laying bare the mechanics of financial mania with forensic precision. Cannon's authoritative and unflinching prose transforms what could be dry economic history into a riveting human drama, illustrating how ambition, corruption, and a catastrophic loss of institutional integrity brought a prosperous colony to its knees. A landmark work in Australian historiography, The Land Boomers stands as an essential study of speculative excess and its societal consequences — a cautionary tale whose echoes resonate far beyond the streets of Victorian-era Melbourne, leaving the reader to wonder whether the lessons of that great collapse were ever truly learned.
Author: Michael Cannon
Format: Paperback
Genre: Australian history
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In the feverish decades of the 1880s, Melbourne was gripped by one of the most audacious speculative frenzies the world had ever witnessed — a land boom of staggering proportions that transformed a colonial city into a labyrinth of debt, delusion, and dazzling ambition. The Land Boomers chronicles the rise and catastrophic fall of the speculators, financiers, and opportunists who gambled fortunes on inflated real estate, constructing an empire of paper wealth that would ultimately crash with devastating consequences in the 1890s depression. Michael Cannon presents a meticulously researched narrative populated by a cast of real historical figures — the audacious promoters, the reckless bankers, and the ordinary citizens swept up in a tide of collective greed — laying bare the mechanics of financial mania with forensic precision. Cannon's authoritative and unflinching prose transforms what could be dry economic history into a riveting human drama, illustrating how ambition, corruption, and a catastrophic loss of institutional integrity brought a prosperous colony to its knees. A landmark work in Australian historiography, The Land Boomers stands as an essential study of speculative excess and its societal consequences — a cautionary tale whose echoes resonate far beyond the streets of Victorian-era Melbourne, leaving the reader to wonder whether the lessons of that great collapse were ever truly learned.