Customer Reviews
Harriman House edition is a well-presented severe abridgement - By: Too many books, 04 Jul 2008 
The Harriman House edition is an abridgement, or to be more precise, an excerpt of the more juicy bits of the book. The original 3-volume book covers many subjects with plenty of gentle 19th-century musings. This edition only contains extracts on John Law, the South Sea Bubble, & the Tulip maniain the Netherlands,in a very slim little pocket volume.
The edition however looks & feels fine, & would perhaps do as a present to someone who is unlikely to be seriously interestedin reading the book, but morein browsing itin a casual leisure moment, & having it sit on their coffee table or their living room bookshelf.
This fact is, shall we say, not immediately obvious from the blurb on Amazon.
Very readable and very relevant - By: Alexander Whiteside, 13 May 2006 
For a book so old, Extraordinary Popular Delusions is still a very easy read (untranslated French aside) & very relevant to the modern day. It traces the origins of "animal magnetism" for example, still around as magnet therapy bracelets & so on, & an excellent example of the conditions which lead people to believe the bizarre. The section on the Alchymists is a real highlight: a history of the field told through potted biographies of its practitioners, covering both the real & legendary aspects of their lives & characters.
The tone is dryly witty with a subtle sarcasm, & once you push through the unengaging subject matter of the opening three chapters (the first two covering fairly similar financial schemes, & the third the "Tulipomania") it's an amazingly compulsive read.
A Bible for Skeptics Everywhere! - By: , 07 Jan 2002 
This is a wonderful book. Although 161 years old, it could describe trendsin 2002 - irrational exuberancein the stock market, astrology, Psychic Friends Network - you get the point. Worth reading for the Crusades & Witch Mania histories alone. Some of the evil donein the name of religion will shock you!
How reliable? - By: , 02 Dec 2001 I read this book because it was listed on a "FT Non-Management Top 10" list at #1. So I thought... there was nothing to lose. i was right, however, it does get terribly tedious &in no place does the author try & explain the madness of crowds he merely describes them...there is a lot of untranslated French which throws you off. Buy it, read some sections then stack on the bookshelf...
Entertaining review of half-forgotten crazes. - By: , 09 Apr 1999 This book is an entertaining review of a number of popular crazes that occupied the minds of the English during the eighteenth & nineteenth centuries. Some of its subjects are well known but others, like the passion for the catchphrase "What a shocking bad hat!", now long forgotten. Although around a hundred years old this book's continuing relevance is demonstrated almost daily by the proliferation of fads, crazes & popular delusionsin our own time. It is pleasing to reflect thatin another century such modern preoccupations as crop circles, alien abductions & satanic ritual abuse will appear as bizarre & absurd as duelling, tulipomania & the South Sea Bubble do now.
