This is the full unabridged edition that includes all three volumes. In this book, Charles Mackay discusses the irrational behaviors of crowds in the economy, war and magic. He gives several different examples of market bubbles such as the Mississippi Scheme and the infamous Tulip Mania in the Netherlands. Ever since it was written, Investors have used it as a guide to help identify boom and bust cycles. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds has had an important influence on economists in understanding of crowd psychology and feedback loops.

This “disturbing yet fascinating” exploration of mass mania through the ages explains the biological and psychological roots of irrationality (Kirkus Reviews). From time immemorial, contagious narratives have spread through susceptible groups—with enormous, often disastrous, consequences. Inspired by Charles Mackay’s nineteenth-century classic Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, neurologist and author William Bernstein examines mass delusion through the lens of current scientific research in The Delusions of Crowds. Bernstein tells the stories of dramatic religious and financial mania in western society over the last five hundred years—from the Anabaptist Madness of the 1530s to the dangerous End-Times beliefs that pervade today’s polarized America; and from the South Sea Bubble to the Enron scandal and dot com bubbles. Through Bernstein’s supple prose, the participants are as colorful as their “desire to improve one’s well-being in this life or the next.” Bernstein’s chronicles reveal the huge cost and alarming implications of mass mania. He observes that if we can absorb the history and biology of this all-too-human phenomenon, we can recognize it more readily in our own time, and avoid its frequently dire impact.

Today, as in the time of the South Sea Bubble, human nature is drawn like a moth to flame by the speculative fads of the marketplace. The excitement of new glamour issues in electronics or medical technology, the general euphoria over a rising market; these lure even many experienced investors. Their optimism overcomes their better judgment. They abandon critical analysis of the investment's fundamental value. Like gamblers in a casino they play against the odds, paying inflated prices and dreaming of quick profit.? ? from the foreword by John Marks Templeton Mackay's classic, first published in 1841, studies the psychology of crowds and mass mania throughout history, including accounts of classic scams, grand-scale madness, and deceptions. Some of these include the Mississippi scheme that swept France in 1720, the South Sea Bubble that ruined thousands in England at the same time, and the tulip mania of Holland, when fortunes were made and lost on single tulip bulbs. Other chapters deal with fads and delusions that often spring from valid ideas of causes, many of which still have their followers today: alchemy and the philosopher's stone, the prophecies of Nostradamus, the coming of comets and judgment day, the Rosicrucians, and astrology. Time and again we can avoid disastrous pitfalls and learn to profit by seeing the ways that history repeats itself. Fascinating, mesmerizing, strikingly strange, and amazingly shrewd, this book will never be forgotten and cannot be ignored.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a study of crowd psychology by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay. The subjects of Mackay's debunking include witchcraft, alchemy, crusades, duels, economic bubbles, fortune-telling, haunted houses, the Drummer of Tedworth, the influence of politics and religion on the shapes of beards and hair, magnetizers (influence of imagination in curing disease), murder through poisoning, prophecies, popular admiration of great thieves, popular follies of great cities, and relics. Contents: Volume 1: National Delusions: The Mississippi Scheme The South Sea Bubble The Tulipomania Relics Modern Prophecies Popular Admiration for Great Thieves Influence of Politics and Religion on the Hair and Beard Duels and Ordeals The Love of the Marvellous and the Disbelief of the True Popular Follies in Great Cities Old Price Riots The Thugs, or Phansigars Volume 2: Peculiar Follies: The Crusades The Witch Mania The Slow Poisoners Haunted Houses Volume 3: Philosophical Delusions : The Alchemysts Fortune Telling The Magnetisers