title: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
author: MacKay, Charles
description: EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS AND THE MADNESS OF CROWDS is a popular history of popular folly in human society by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, first published in 1841 but most of which remains incredibly relevent to this day. The book chronicles its subjects in three parts: "National Delusions," "Peculiar Follies," and "Philosophical Delusions." The subjects of Mackay's debunking include economic bubbles, crusades & witch-hunts, fortune-telling, medical quackery in curing disease, haunted houses, popular follies of great cities, and the popular admiration of great criminals. This is a book of reason and common-sense which shows precisely how man's idiocy is destined to keep repeating itself, and it is a book which indeed even prohesied the financial crash of 1929 and the economic downturn of more recent years. In fact, important present day writers on economics, such as Andrew Tobias and Michael Lewis, give it high praise.