March 2004
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness
of Crowds by Charles Mackay
Book Review
Evil Robots is usually on the cutting edge, but this book review
is definitely not. Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions
and the Madness of Crowds was published over 150 years ago, and
we just got around to this review. Normally that would put a lot
of pressure on me to be well prepared and to write a nice review.
Fortunately, this being Evil Robots, the expectations for my review
remain pretty low.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions covers all manner of what I'll
call "crowd think". I prefer "crowd-think" to
delusion or madness because Mackay does not restrict his subject
to just the most absurd of popular follies. Certainly the delusions
and madnesses occupy most of the chapters, but he allows some space
for the lesser phenomena of slang and fads. Mackay is a historian
of mass mentality in all of its forms.
Many other reviewers of this book cite the financial delusion chapters
as the most worthwhile. Money madness is indisputably relevant to
present day life, but these chapters are not the most compellingly
written. I found myself pushing through to finish each of the finance
chapters - glad for having read them, but somewhat exhausted.
If you want leisure reading, you can easily skip around the book.
Read The Alchymists (or a selection of biographies from the chapter),
The Crusades, The Witch Mania, The Slow Poisoners, and Haunted Houses.
The Alchymists features biographies of true believers who squandered
their time, intellect, and money on a futile quest, as well as stories
of frauds who used alchemy to fool people into parting with their
money. The Crusades and The Witch Mania will leave you horrified
at the recklessness and bloodlust of "religious" people.
The Slow Poisoners details the emergence of a murderous fad, while
Haunted Houses shows that paranormal excitements (and deceptions)
were the same in the past as they are now. Reading these five chapters
will both amuse you to no end and relieve you of any desire to boast
of Western civilization.
Mackay is able to document most types and instances of crowd-think,
but he could not separate himself from believing in the ultimate
truth of some unnamed form of Christianity (and believing that his
readers must share the faith). References to his faith do not appear
often enough to destroy the value of the history he presents, but,
to a modern reader, they will be a striking aberration.
Mackay explores delusions and madnesses occurring even up to the
writing of the book (first edition - 1841, second edition - 1852).
The reader will naturally fill in the gap by recalling modern examples;
many facets of human folly are clearly unchanged despite the time
that has passed. Delusion is always present in human society, so
this book is still a must-read in 2004.
