Review written for ClubReading.com by Susan
If you thought the Beanie Baby craze and $100 hostas in garden catalogues were a product of modern insanity, take heart-humans have always been whack-o about fads and schemes, as Mackay’s classic of crowd psychology makes plain. Originally published in 1841, now in paperback editions, Delusions is an account of grand-scale follies both amusing and not so amusing, such as the Tulipmania in 17th century Holland during which fortunes were made and lost on a single bulb; and the Crusades, which quickly devolved into an orgy of pillage and torture sanctioned by religious conviction. Other mass manias that Mackay names for deconstruction include the prophecies of Nostradamus, the traffic in relics, alchemy, the burning of witches, and “the Hero-Worship of Common Thieves” such as Robin Hood. Mackay’s writing is clearly from another time, but his merciless dissection of absurdity is engrossing and disquietingly pertinent.
EXCERPT FROM Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds:
[from “The Tulipmania”] Many persons grow insensibly attached to that which gives them a great deal of trouble, as a mother often loves her sick and ever-ailing child better than her more healthy offspring. Upon the same principal we must account for the unmerited encomia lavished upon these fragile [tulip] blossoms. In 1634, the rage among the Dutch to possess them was so great that the ordinary industry of the country was neglected, and the population, even to its lowest dregs, embarked in the tulip trade. As the mania increased, prices augmented, until, in the year 1635, many persons were known to invest a fortune of 100,000 florins in the purchase of forty [bulbs]. It then became necessary to sell them by their weight in perits, a small weight less than a grain. A tulip of the species called Admiral Liefken, weighing 400 perits, was worth 4,400 florins. . .
So anxious were speculators to obtain [these bulbs] that one person offered the fee-simple of twelve acres of building-ground for the Harlaem tulip. That of Amsterdam was bought for 4,600 florins, a new carriage, two grey horses, and a complete set of harness.