Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

About this book

Charles Mackay’s Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a lively, trenchant exploration of how whole societies can surrender reason to fashion, fear, and profit. With brisk storytelling and wry commentary, Mackay catalogs episodes of speculative manias, witch-hunts, alchemical obsessions, and fad-driven enthusiasms to reveal the human motives—greed, vanity, conformity—that repeatedly spark collective folly. Equal parts entertaining chronicle and cautionary diagnosis, the book invites readers to spot recurring patterns in history and in themselves, offering timeless insight into why crowds follow the irrational and how we might resist being swept along.