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Product Description
Product Description
First published in 1841, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" is often cited as the best book ever written about market psychology. This Harriman House edition includes Charles Mackay's account of the three infamous financial manias - John Law's Mississipi Scheme, the South Sea Bubble, and Tulipomania. Between the three of them, these historic episodes confirm that greed and fear have always been the driving forces of financial markets, and, furthermore, that being sensible and clever is no defence against the mesmeric allure of a popular craze with the wind behind it. In writing the history of the great financial manias, Charles Mackay proved himself a master chronicler of social as well as financial history. Blessed with a cast of characters that covered all the vices, gifted a passage of events which was inevitably heading for disaster, and with the benefit of hindsight, he produced a record that is at once a riveting thriller and absorbing historical document. A century and a half later, it is as vibrant and lurid as the day it was written. For modern-day investors, still reeling from the dotcom crash, the moral of the popular manias scarcely needs spelling out. When the next stock market bubble comes along, as it surely will, you are advised to recall the plight of some of the unfortunates on these pages, and avoid getting dragged under the wheels of the careering bandwagon yourself.
About the Author
Charles Mackay (1814-1889) was born in Perth, Scotland. His mother died shortly after his birth, and his father, who had been in turn a Lieutenant on a Royal Navy sloop (captured and imprisoned for four years in France) and then an Ensign in the 47th foot taking part in the ill-fated Walcheren Expedition where he contracted malaria, sent young Charles to live with a nurse in Woolwich in 1822. After a couple of years' education in Brussels from 1828-1830, he became a journalist and songwriter in London. He worked on The Morning Chronicle from 1835-1844, when he was appointed Editor of The Glasgow Argus. His song The Good Time Coming sold 400,000 copies in 1846, the year that he was awarded his Doctorate of Literature by Glasgow University. He was a friend of influential figures such as Charles Dickens and Henry Russell, and moved to London to work on The Illustrated London News in 1848, and he became Editor of it in 1852. He was a correspondent for The Times during the American Civil War, but thereafter concentrated on writing books. Apart from Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, he is best remembered for his songs and his Dictionary of Lowland Scotch.
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First Sentence
The personal character and career of one man are so intimately connected with the great scheme of the years 1719 and 1720, that a history of the Mississippi madness can have no fitter introduction than a sketch of the life of its great author John Law. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
The personal character and career of one man are so intimately connected with the great scheme of the years 1719 and 1720, that a history of the Mississippi madness can have no fitter introduction than a sketch of the life of its great author John Law. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
For a book so old, Extraordinary Popular Delusions is still a very easy read (untranslated French aside) and very relevant to the modern day. It traces the origins of "animal magnetism" for example, still around as magnet therapy bracelets and so on, and an excellent example of the conditions which lead people to believe the bizarre. The section on the Alchymists is a real highlight: a history of the field told through potted biographies of its practitioners, covering both the real and legendary aspects of their lives and characters.
The tone is dryly witty with a subtle sarcasm, and once you push through the unengaging subject matter of the opening three chapters (the first two covering fairly similar financial schemes, and the third the "Tulipomania") it's an amazingly compulsive read.
The tone is dryly witty with a subtle sarcasm, and once you push through the unengaging subject matter of the opening three chapters (the first two covering fairly similar financial schemes, and the third the "Tulipomania") it's an amazingly compulsive read.
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is an entertaining review of a number of popular crazes that occupied the minds of the English during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Some of its subjects are well known but others, like the passion for the catchphrase "What a shocking bad hat!", now long forgotten. Although around a hundred years old this book's continuing relevance is demonstrated almost daily by the proliferation of fads, crazes and popular delusions in our own time. It is pleasing to reflect that in another century such modern preoccupations as crop circles, alien abductions and satanic ritual abuse will appear as bizarre and absurd as duelling, tulipomania and the South Sea Bubble do now.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
First, ignore the review that says 'This edition only contains extracts on John Law, the South Sea Bubble, and the Tulip mania in the Netherlands...'. That review relates to a different edition. This paperback edition contains all the sections referred to in the summary. The content is wide ranging, from financial manias to the Crusades, witch trials, poisonings and so on, so it's a fascinating selection. My only warning would be that the book was written nearly 200 years ago, so the language and style is a bit archaic nowadays. The author is prone to 19th century meandering thoughts on the nature of man and his behaviour, when you just want him to get on with telling the story! Well worth a try though.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Small Volume, Big Lessons
This is an extract from the book of the same name and covers three episodes: the Mississippi Scheme, The South Sea Bubble and Tulipomania. Read more
Published 10 months ago by demola
GOOD READ
This book goes to show that fads are not a modern thing and have been going on for hundreds of years.A fascinating insight into the crazes of yesteryear
Published 18 months ago by kerrsy
Nice formatting but no illustrations.
You may as well go to Project Gutenberg and download the full text as a .mobi for free, the formatting of that is almost as good as this, and there are no illustrations in either... Read more
Published 18 months ago by I. Rawlings
Wordsworth Reference Series
The print font in the Wordsworth Reference Series paperback is so small it gives me a headache reading half a page. Read more
Published 19 months ago by martke
The Human Comedy
For those of a sceptical turn of mind,whose view of human affairs is even somewhat jaundiced,this book will appeal immensely. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Mr. T. D. Foster
should be read by everyone
This book should be given a read by everyone. Some of the crazes he writes about are boggling to the mind, it is hard to take it in that they happened at all. Read more
Published on 15 May 2010 by Larry Purcell
Same as it ever was. Sheeple havent changed much.
What a brilliant book! It is quite hard to put down as sometimes it feels a bit like reading a history of the PRESENT in the future. Read more
Published on 17 Dec 2009 by derestricted
Don't buy this edition!
This is a heavily abridged edition which excludes 13 of the original 16 chapters, including some mentioned in the very misleading product description.
Published on 16 Nov 2009 by Fintan
We are no different from our ancestors
I wanted to read this book to learn more about our current financial crisis. And I learned that if you think that the current financial crisis is an extraordinary event and our... Read more
Published on 15 Nov 2009 by Mariusz Skonieczny
Harriman House edition is a well-presented severe abridgement
The Harriman House edition is an abridgement, or to be more precise, an excerpt of the more juicy bits of the book. Read more
Published on 4 July 2008 by Too many books
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