Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds ^{3rd Ed.}

First published in 1841, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is often cited as the best book ever written about market psychology. This edition includes Charles Mackay's account of the three infamous financial manias — John Law's Mississipi Scheme, the South Sea Bubble, and Tulipomania. Between the three of them, these historic episodes confirm that greed and fear have always been the driving forces of financial markets, and, furthermore, that being sensible and clever is no defence against the mesmeric allure of a popular craze with the wind behind it.In writing the history of the great financial manias, Charles Mackay proved himself a master chronicler of social as well as financial history. Blessed with a cast of characters that covered all the vices, gifted a passage of events which was inevitably heading for disaster, and with the benefit of hindsight, he produced a record that is at once a riveting thriller and absorbing historical document. A century and a half later, it is as vibrant and lurid as the day it was written. For modern-day investors, still reeling from the dotcom crash, the moral of the popular manias scarcely needs spelling out. When the next stock market bubble comes along, as it surely will, you are advised to recall the plight of some of the unfortunates on these pages, and avoid getting dragged under the wheels of the careering bandwagon yourself.

• The Mississippi Scheme.
• John Law; his birth and youthful career
• Duel between Law and Wilson
• Law's escape from the King's Bench
• The "Land-bank"
• Law's gambling propensities on the continent, and acquaintance with the Duke of Orleans
• State of France after the reign of Louis XIV.
• Paper money instituted in that country by Law
• Enthusiasm of the French people at the Mississippi Scheme
• Marshal Villars
• Stratagems employed and bribes given for an interview with Law
• Great fluctuations in Mississippi stock
• Dreadful murders
• Law created comptroller-general of finances
• Great sale for all kinds of ornaments in Paris
• Financial difficulties commence
• Men sent out to work the mines on the Mississippi, as a blind
• Payment stopped at the bank
• Law dismissed from the ministry
• Payments made in specie
• Law and the Regent satirised in song
• Dreadful crisis of the Mississippi Scheme
• Law, almost a ruined man, flies to Venice
• Death of the Regent
• Law obliged to resort again to gambling
• His death at Venice
• The South-Sea Bubble.
• Originated by Harley Earl of Oxford
• Exchange Alley a scene of great excitement
• Mr. Walpole
• Sir John Blunt
• Great demand for shares
• Innumerable "Bubbles"
• List of nefarious projects and bubbles
• Great rise in South-Sea stock
• Sudden fall
• General meeting of the directors
• Fearful climax of the South-Sea expedition
• Its effects on society
• Uproar in the House of Commons
• Escape of Knight
• Apprehension of Sir John Blunt
• Recapture of Knight at Tirlemont
• His second escape
• Persons connected with the scheme examined
• Their respective punishments
• Concluding remarks
• The Tulipomania.
• Conrad Gesner
• Tulips brought from Vienna to England
• Rage for the tulip among the Dutch
• Its great value
• Curious anecdote of a sailor and a tulip
• Regular marts for tulips
• Tulips employed as a means of speculation
• Great depreciation in their value
• End of the mania
• The Alchymists.
• Introductory remarks
• Pretended antiquity of the art
• Geber
• Alfarabi
• Avicenna
• Albertus Magnus
• Thomas Aquinas
• Artephius
• Alain de Lisle
• Arnold de Villeneuve
• Pietro d'Apone
• Raymond Lulli
• Roger Bacon
• Pope John XXII
• Jean de Meung
• Nicholas Flamel
• George Ripley
• Basil Valentine
• Bernard of Trèves
• Trithemius
• The Maréchal de Rays
• Jacques Cœur
• Inferior adepts
• Progress of the infatuation during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
• Augurello
• Cornelius Agrippa
• Paracelsus
• George Agricola
• Denys Zachaire
• Dr. Dee and Edward Kelly
• The Cosmopolite
• Sendivogius
• The Rosicrucians
• Michael Mayer
• Robert Fludd
• Jacob Böhmen
• John Heydon
• Joseph Francis Borri
• Alchymical writers of the seventeenth century
• Delisle
• Albert Aluys
• Count de St. Germain
• Cagliostro
• Present state of the science
• Modern Prophecies.
• Terror of the approaching day of judgment
• A comet the signal of that day
• The prophecy of Whiston
• The people of Leeds greatly alarmed at that event
• The plague in Milan
• Fortune-tellers and Astrologers
• Prophecy concerning the overflow of the Thames
• Mother Shipton
• Merlin
• Heywood
• Peter of Pontefract
• Robert Nixon
• Almanac-makers
• Fortune-telling.
• Presumption and weakness of man
• Union of Fortune-tellers and Alchymists
• Judicial astrology encouraged in England from the time of Elizabeth to William and Mary
• Lilly the astrologer consulted by the House of Commons as to the cause of the Fire of London
• Encouragement of the art in France and Germany
• Nostradamus
• Basil of Florence
• Antiochus Tibertus
• Kepler
• Necromancy
• Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Arnold Villeneuve
• Geomancy
• Augury
• Divination: list of various species of divination
• Oneiro-criticism (interpretation of dreams)
• Omens
• The Magnetisers.
• The influence of imagination in curing diseases
• Mineral magnetisers
• Paracelsus
• Kircher the Jesuit
• Sebastian Wirdig
• William Maxwell
• The Convulsionaries of St. Medard
• Father Hell
• Mesmer, the founder of Animal Magnetism
• D'Eslon, his disciple
• M. de Puysegur
• Dr. Mainauduc's success in London
• Holloway, Loutherbourg, Mary Pratt, &c.
• Perkins's "Metallic Tractors"
• Decline of the science
• Influence of Politics and Religion on the Hair and Beard.
• Early modes of wearing the hair and beard
• Excommunication and outlawry decreed against curls
• Louis VII.'s submission thereto the cause of the long wars between England and France
• Charles V. of Spain and his courtiers
• Peter the Great
• His tax upon beards
• Revival of beards and moustaches after the French Revolution of 1830
• The King of Bavaria (1838) orders all civilians wearing moustaches to be arrested and shaved
• Examples from Bayeux tapestry
• The Crusades.
• Different accounts of the Crusaders derived from History and Romance
• Pilgrimages to the Holy Land first undertaken by converted Jews and the very credulous
• Increasing number of pilgrims every year
• Relics greatly valued
• Haroun al Reschid
• The pilgrims taxed
• Robert of Normandy
• The pilgrims persecuted by the Turks
• Peter the Hermit
• His first idea of rousing the powers of Christendom
• His interview with Simeon
• Peter the Hermit preaches the Holy War to all the nations of Christendom
• The Pope crosses the Alps
• King Philip accused of adultery with Bertrade de Montfort
• The Council of Clermont
• Oration of Urban II.
• The "Truce of God"
• Gautier sans Avoir, or Walter the Pennyless
• Gottschalk
• The arrival at Semlin
• Peter the Hermit at Nissa
• At Constantinople
• The Crusaders conducted in safety to Constantinople
• Fresh hordes from Germany
• Godfrey of Bouillon
• Count of Vermandois
• Tancred
• The siege of Antioch
• The Holy Lance
• Fate of Peter Barthelemy
• Siege of Jerusalem
• St. Bernard
• Second Crusade: Siege of Damascus
• Third Crusade: Death of Henry II.
• Richard Cœur de Lion
• Fourth Crusade
• Fifth Crusade: Constantinople assaulted
• Sixth Crusade: Camhel and Cohreddin
• Seventh Crusade: Departure of Louis IX. for Cyprus
• For Acre
• His death at Carthage
• End of the Crusades
• The Witch Mania.
• Popular notions of the devil
• Inferior demons
• Demons of both sexes
• Demons preferring the night between Friday and Saturday
• The devil in the shape of a goat
• Sorcery
• Execution of Joan of Arc
• Witches burned in Europe
• Various charges of Witchcraft
• Trois Echelles
• The Witches of Warbois
• John Knox
• Torture of Dr. Fian
• The Lancashire Witches
• Matthew Hopkins
• Burnings at Würzburg, at Lindheim, at Labourt
• Request of the parliament of Rouen to the King, in 1670
• Würzburg the scene of the last case of Witchcraft
• The Witchcraft of Lady Hatton
• Witchcraft at Hastings and many other parts of England
• The Slow Poisoners.
• Murder of Sir Thomas Overbury
• Trial of Weston
• Of Sir Jervis Elwes
• Poisoning most prevalent in Italy
• Poisons manufactured by La Tophania
• Her death
• Madame de Brinvilliers
• The poisoning of her father and two brothers
• Lavoisin and Lavigoreux
• Haunted Houses.
• The haunted house in Aix-la-Chapelle
• In Tours
• The royal palace of Woodstock a haunted house
• The supposed ghosts at Tedworth
• At Cock Lane
• At Stockwell
• Haunted house at Baldarroch
• Popular Follies of Great Cities.
• Cant phrases
• "Quoz"
• "What a shocking bad hat"
• "Hookey Walker"
• "There he goes with his eye out"
• "Has your mother sold her mangle?"
• "Does your mother know you're out?"
• "Tom and Jerry"
• "Jim Crow"
• Popular Admiration of Great Thieves.
• Robin Hood
• Claude Duval
• Dick Turpin
• Jonathan Wild
• Jack Sheppard
• Vidocq
• Mausch Nadel
• The Beggar's Opera
• Rob Roy
• Duels and Ordeals.
• The origin of the Duello
• All persons engaged in duelling excommunicated by the Council of Trent
• The fire ordeal
• The water ordeal
• The Corsned
• Duel between Ingelgerius and Gontran
• Duel between Francois de Vivonne and Guy de Chabot
• L'Isle-Marivaut and Marolles
• Richelieu
• Duel between the Dukes De Beaufort and De Nemours
• Laws against Duelling
• Duel between Lord Sanquir and Turner
• Between the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Mohun
• German students inveterate Duellists
• Relics.
• The True Cross
• Tears of our Saviour
• The Santa Scala, or Holy Stairs
• The mad Knight of Malta
• Shakspeare's Mulberry-tree

How masses have been manipulated in the past. Eerie reminiscent of current mass delusions. A Classical work from 1841, but still a must read.