Extraordinary Popular Delusions

Originally published in England in 1841, this compelling study offers a remarkable survey of human folly. The first of the financial scandals discussed, 'The Mississippi Scheme,' concerns a disasterous eighteenth-century plan for the commercial exploitation of the Mississippi valley. During the same era, thousands of English investors were ruined by the South-Sea Bubble, a stock exchange based on British trade with the islands of the South Seas and South America. The third and final incident covered by this volume involves Holland's seventeenth-century Tulipomania, during which people went into debt in order to collect tulip bulbs, until a sudden depreciation in their value rendered them worthless-except as flowers. These historic events, fired by greed and fed by naivete, remain ever-relevant and continue to enthrall modern readers.