Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds

Dates Covered: -
ISBN: 051788433x
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Our Take

The German philosopher Freidrich Schiller tells us, "Anyone taken as an individual is tolerably sensible and reasonable - as a member of a crowd, he at once becomes a blockhead." Written in 1841 by Charles McKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions outlines classic episodes of mass behavior in history. These include worship of alchemists, fortune-tellers, haunted houses, and "popular follies of great cities". For modern context, Andrew Tobias comments in the book's forward about "'the hustle', where large groups of young people learned to dance in lemminglike unison." How quaint. And, hilariously, the book's original title was Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Krauts. Echoes of David Hasselhoff?

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