Classic survey of crowd psychology takes an illuminating, entertaining look at three historic swindles: "The Mississippi Scheme," "The South-Sea Bubble," and "Tulipomania." Fired by greed and fed by naivete, these stratagems gone awry offer essential reading for investors as well as students of hist[...]

Describing bizarrely popular Victorian street slang, the madness of crowds, stock market mania (from the South Sea Bubble to Tulip fever), popular fashions, fads, crazes, schemes and scams, this brilliantly entertaining and ever-more relevant study of human folly shows that we are always susceptible[...]

Whenever struck by campaigns, fads, cults and fashions, the reader may take some comfort that Charles Mackay can demonstrate historical parallels for almost every neurosis of our times. The South Sea Bubble, Witch Mania, Alchemy, the Crusades, Fortune-telling, Haunted Houses, and even 'Tulipomania' [...]

First published in 1841, Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, with its vivid descriptions of celebrated financial manias ('bubbles'), is often cited as the most powerful book ever written about market psychology. Mackay chronicles many celebrated bubbles to dem[...]