Chief Inspector Armand Gamache returns to Three Pines in #1 New York Times bestseller Louise Penny's latest spellbinding novel, The Madness of Crowds. You're a coward. Time and again, as the New Year approaches, that charge is leveled against Armand Gamache. It starts innocently enough.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a history of popular folly by Charles Mackay. The book chronicles its targets in three parts: National Delusions, Peculiar Follies, and Philosophical Delusions. Learn why intelligent people do amazingly stupid things when caught up in speculative edevorse.The subjects of Mackay's debunking include alchemy, beards (influence of politics and religion on), witch-hunts, crusades, and duels.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds [Book]

Classic swindles, wild schemes, and incredible scams on a grand scale: this 19th century landmark study of crowd psychology and mass mania provides an entertaining account of human folly through the ages. It happens in every period and every nation, from the Tulipomania that practically consumed the Dutch imagination in the 17th century to the Mississippi Scheme that swept France in 1720 and the South Sea Bubble that ruined thousands in England during the same decade.