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Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds (Paperback)
by Charles Mackay
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Author: Charles Mackay
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Pub. in: July, 1995
ISBN: 051788433X
Pages: 768
Measurements: 8.8 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA01367
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0517884331
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- MSL Picks -
This is it. If you want to know how many times the world has been gripped by madness then look no farther than the reprinted edition of MacKay's classic. Written in that wonderful Olde English style of the early 19th century, MacKay takes us on a tour of the world's most horrifying manias - up to about 1840 anyway.
I particularly liked the chapter on witchcraft and witch hunts since it told me everything I'll ever need to know on why seemingly intelligent groups of people band together to banish or murder innocent members of society - just because they are different. Another engaging chapter deals with millennialism - the fear and dread that grips society at the end of each millennium. If you thought the end of the last one brought turbulence, you should read what happened a thousand years ago.
This book is often quoted by stock market pundits and talking heads as if it were a treatise on irrational behaviour in the financial markets. It isn't. It deals with irrational behaviour and mass stupidity in all walks of life. Five Stars.
(From quoting M. Mcfarland, USA)
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Charles Mackay (1841-1889) 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 from1835-1844, 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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From Publisher
A complete repackaging of the classic work about grand-scale madness, major schemes, and bamboozlement-and the universal human susceptibility to all three. This informative, funny collection encompasses a broad range of manias and deceptions, from witch burnings to the Great Crusades to the prophecies of Nostradamus.
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Andrew Tobias (MSL quote), USA
<2008-04-30 00:00>
As with any true classic, once it is read it is hard to imagine not having known of it-and there is the compulsion to recommend it to others. |
Inside Flap Copy, USA
<2008-04-30 00:00>
A complete repackaging of the classic work about grand-scale madness, major schemes, and bamboozlement--and the universal human susceptibility to all three. This informative, funny collection encompasses a broad range of manias and deceptions, from witch burnings to the Great Crusades to the prophecies of Nostradamus.
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A. Woodley (MSL quote), USA
<2008-04-30 00:00>
Goodness knows how many times this book has been reprinted, but it is a classic, it recounts many of the strange and popular freakish and delusional things that crowds have got up to over history. Tulip-mania, witch-hunts, fortune-telling, south-seas bubble. Its fun, fascinating and easy to dip into for a quick read as each chapter is really independent of the others. I re-read parts of this recently having just read Elaine Showalter's very controversial recent book "Hystories". Showalter's book is as much about modern psychological 'hysteria's' (as she calls them) - things like Recovered Memory Syndrome, and Ritual Abuse accusations which she seems to liken very much to popularist crowd behaviour . And while you may or not agree with her, I think it is interesting to read her book after this one. Still if you just want a bit of light read, then this book is definitely right up there - and it is always so much more fun and comfortable to be able to laugh gently at the patent ignorance of these poor deluded historical crowds! |
Richard Stoyeck (MSL quote), USA
<2008-04-30 00:00>
If you are a stock market investor, than this book must appear as one of your top 10 books to read. Investors really have no choice but to read this book because unlike any book you will ever read, this book teaches you about the CROWD. What motivates the crowd, and what causes people to join the crowd. If you were to ask any of the famous investors you have read about, every one of them is aware of the importance of CROWD PSYCHOLOGY. Warren Buffett has always talked about Mr. Market, which he learned from Benjamin Graham.
Now having said this let me tell you quickly what this book is about. MacKay in a brilliant, and in an interesting manner takes you through 700 pages of mass buying panics from centuries ago. These include The Witch Mania (100 pages) in the 15th and 16th century. The Crusades (100 pages), Alchemy (160 pages), and the Poisoners- hey, poisoning people was a big thing centuries ago- remember Napoleon.
The big buying binge that most people recognize is the South Sea Tulip Craze, where the participants bid up the price of tulips, yes tulips to the equivalent cost of houses and more. We're not done, MacKay goes through many, many more crazes, panics, and buying binges. All of these stories involve the CROWD. Extraordinary Popular Delusions... has survived the test of time. We do not know if anything being written today, or any studies being researched currently will be able to stand the time test? We only know that MacKay's book has.
Is the book interesting?
Yes it's fascinating, but you have to be interested in this subject. If you are in the financial markets you have no to STUDY, NOT READ this book. I say this because I have been a money manager and history buff for 35 years. If I did not live through the modern equivalent of MacKay's book, frankly I wouldn't believe half the stuff that is in this book, which is presented as truth.
The reality is I have seen MacKay's explanations work out in my own lifetime, and so have you. A few 20th century equivalents are in order:
1) INTERNET STOCK MAREKT CRAZE: 1999 - 2000
Wow, I did an analysis of the market value, of a major Internet stock in play at the time of the craze. The stock was representative of hundreds of other companies participating in the run-up in value. One day, I discovered that this Internet stock's market value was the equivalent of ten major corporations combined. These companies included IBM, GM, Ford, Chrysler, Electronic Data Processing, JC Penny, Sears, and others, all combined. It couldn't be. Did I calculate wrong? It was true, and the number was getting bigger every day.
Over $1.4 trillion dollars had been committed to Internet stocks by some of the smartest savviest people in the world. When it was over, that $1.4 trillion was reduced to under $100 billion. Over 90 plus percent of the value had simply disappeared. This was Extraordinary Popular Delusions all over again, and you lived through it too.
2) Personal Note: During the Internet Craze, I was re-tooling by taking courses at Harvard University. Every five years, I try to do this. I would drive up once a week and spend eight hours in financial classes with some of America's truly outstanding teaching professors to see what's new in academia that hasn't hit the money management industry yet. These world-renowned professors all got swept into the Internet stock market craze. They personally lost substantial pieces of their net worth. Every one of them was claiming that we were in a new age. They were throwing out their financial training out the window.
These were Professors who had read every page of MacKay's book, underlined it, annotated it, and even memorized sections. This is what you need to know. The first words that come out of a person's mouth involved in mass hysteria are - THIS TIME IT WILL BE DIFFERENT. It's a dead giveaway that we are in a POPULAR DELUSION.
3) The American Invasion of Iraq: Forget whether the President was right or wrong. Every intelligence agency in the world believed that the Iraqi's had weapons of mass destruction. David Kay, perhaps the smartest man in government believed it. This again, is an example of the crowd psychology in action.
4) Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba- President Kennedy as smart a man as they come got swept up into the crowd psychology believing along with everyone else that 1500 poorly trained Cubans could land on a beach in Cuba, and then suddenly without support, walk their way into Havana picking up ordinary people on the countryside who would swell their ranks and allow these expatriates to overthrow the Castro regime. These were the smartest men in government that believed this.
The list goes on and on, and if you the reader live long enough, you will see yourself swept up in these instances of mass hysteria. If two Presidents of the United States can get caught up in crowd psychology, we all better be on the lookout for it. Good luck.
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