Extraordinary Popular Delusions: And the Madness of Crowds

More than a century before Alan Greenspan coined the phrase "irrational exuberance" to describe the speculative bubble inflating technology stocks, Charles Mackay was recording the history of "tulipomania," a speculative madness surrounding the value of tulips in the 18th century that was the ruin of many Dutch and English investors. This is only one of the "extraordinary popular delusions" documented by Mackay in a fascinating study of group psychology. He also describes notorious witch hu...