Charles Mackay — Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841)

Tulip mania, the South Sea Bubble and the Mississippi Scheme: the original book on financial manias.

Scottish journalist Charles Mackay collected stories of crowds swept up in shared delusions, from alchemy and witch-hunts to the great speculative bubbles of the 1600s and 1700s.

Its chapters on the Dutch tulip craze and the South Sea Bubble are still required reading for investors. It shows in human terms the kind of euphoria Minsky later described in economic ones.

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