Makes brilliant sense of gigantic currency speculations

Time reviews House of All Nations in 1938 and likes it.

The reviewer writes:

Unlike most novelists of financial high life, Author Stead gives the complex details of shady transactions, banking manipulations, stock transfers, wheat deals, makes brilliant sense of gigantic currency speculations, of how the Bertillons make millions in bear operations on Kreuger stocks.

The magazine reviews House again in 1978 and likes it less.

The new reviewer writes:

This is a long, unfathomably static but often exhilarating novel about money. There are 104 chapters, at least as many characters, and dialogue that runs on and on like ticker tape.