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Extraordinary Popular Delusions

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mejane

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... and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay.

Who else has this book? Is it for real - it's always seemed a little too good to be true :confused:

Jane.
 
I have this book. I love it. It's not a book i've read cover to cover but over the course of the years i've dipped into it and I suppose i've read it all in dribs and drabs. It was the first book that I ever saw that was truely 'fortean'.

How do you mean 'too good to be true'?? I just see it as a chronicle not as a really serious investigation.
 
I've not heard of it, please give details.

Eye Theng Yow . . .!

Carole
 
*ahem*

'This classic catalogue of some of the more outre enthusiams-speculative, social religious and just plain daft-serves as a salutary reminder that the follies of mankind are not unigue to the modern world'

Published in 1841 it deals with amongst other things Tulip mania, the south sea bubble, the crusades, fortune telling, witch manias, poisoners etc. etc.

It's brilliant, still in print (ISBN 1853263494) and can often be found in those remaindered book shops.........
 
Thank you modom, I will look out for it, it sounds like an essential addition to my (already extensive) library!

:)

Carole
 
As the title suggests, Mackay was a sceptic but the book remains a
lively compendium of curiosities. The expanded 1852 edition was
available in the mid nineties in an ultra-cheap Wordsworth reprint at
two quid! :)
 
a gem indeed the tulip maina chapter is a lesson to us all (house prices anyone?) and the South Sea bubble! (Enron) i love the stall that set up selling shares in "an enterprise which we cannot give details but u may be asured will make great profits"...
 
Just gone and got myself a second hand copy on Amazon!

Carole
 
sidecar_jon said:
i love the stall that set up selling shares in "an enterprise which we cannot give details but u may be asured will make great profits"...
Click to expand...
cf Large amounts of money in Nigerian accounts, and they need your help to get it out. Great book - proof positive that there's very little new in the world.

Wish I could find my copy - Amazon here I come, maybe...
 
Bookshops like Waterstones or Dillons usually keep in the 'Classics' section, alongside lots of other cheap reprints. You can also usually find it at various discount bookshops.
 
stu neville said:
cf Large amounts of money in Nigerian accounts, and they need your help to get it out. Great book - proof positive that there's very little new in the world.

Wish I could find my copy - Amazon here I come, maybe... [/B]
Click to expand...

I belive that Issac Newton lost a huge amount of money on it....
 
I first came across this book a year or so ago, and suddenly it seemed to be everywhere, which made me wonder if it was a modern fraud... obviously not :)

The edition I have has a wonderful illustration entitled "Law in a Car Drawn by Cocks" :rofl:

Jane.
 
Greets

Memoirs of Popular Delusions Vol. 1

by Charles Mackay



Contents

National Delusions

The Mississippi Scheme

Section II

Section III

Section IV

The South Sea Bubble

Section II

Section III

Section IV

The Tulipomania

Relics

Modern Prophecies

Section II

Great Thieves

Politics and Religion

Duels and Ordeals

Section II

Section III

Section IV

Disbelief of the True

Popular Follies

The O.P. Mania

Section II

The Thugs

Section II




Publisher: The World Wide SchoolTM
Publication Date: June 1998

also available here:

http://www.worldwideschool.org/libr...ogy/MemoirsofPopularDelusionsV1/legalese.html

mal
 
After 15 years this thread is once more woke!

Was Tulip Mania really the first great financial bubble?

... Tulip Mania is often cited as the classic example of a financial bubble: when the price of something goes up and up, not because of its intrinsic value, but because people who buy it expect to be able to sell it again at a profit.

It may seem foolish to pay $1m for a tulip bulb - but if you hope to sell it on to another receptive buyer for $2m, it can still be a rational investment. This is known as the "greater fool" theory.

Whether or not it explains tulip mania however, is a subtle question.

Charles Mackay's 1841 account has cast a long shadow over our imagination. His book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness of Crowds, is full of vivid stories about how the entire Dutch nation was involved. But those extravagant tales - including the one I have just told you, about the hungry sailor - are probably false. ...

As Mike Dash notes in Tulipomania, the philosopher Justus Lipsius wasn't impressed by the tulip collectors.

"What should I call this but a kind of merry madness?" he said, adding: "They do vaingloriously hunt after strange herbs and flowers, which having gotten, they preserve and cherish more carefully than any mother doth her childe."

But, in the early 1600s, the price of tulips just kept on rising. Adriaen Pauw, who was fabulously wealthy and the closest thing Holland had to a prime minister at the time, built a garden full of artfully-positioned mirrors. In the centre were a few rare tulips, made by the mirrors to look like a multitude - an admission that not even Pauw could afford to fill his garden.

The highest price for which we have good evidence was 5,200 guilders for a single bulb, in that winter of 1637. That is more than three times what Rembrandt charged for painting The Night Watch just five years later, and 20 times the annual income of a skilled worker, such as a carpenter. ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51311368
 
Free download available at:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24518

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."

Sounds like a strong battle cry for libertarianism. We can only imagine what ridicule Mackay would have reserved for the 20th century totalitarian herd mentality giving rise to communism/socialism/fascism/nazism etc.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Free download available at:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24518

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."

Sounds like a strong battle cry for libertarianism. We can only imagine what ridicule Mackay would have reserved for the 20th century totalitarian herd mentality giving rise to communism/socialism/fascism/nazism etc.
Click to expand...

But Mackay would have absolutely loved this Monty Python scene:

 
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