Devil Take The Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation

by EdwardChancellor (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2000

  $116.06

  This is a history of financial speculation. From the 17th-century the beginning of the 21st century, Edward Chancellor takes the reader through accounts of the tulipomania of Holland - when tulip bulbs changed hands for the price of houses - through well-known British speculative manias, such as the South Sea Bubble and Railway Mania of Victorian times, and concludes that contemporary speculative mania is remarkably similar. This is a comprehensive book on the subject which should be of interest to investors, economists and anyone who wishes to acquire an understanding of the modern economic system, as well as mainstream historians.

• New

  Paperback
  1998

  $18.82

  Is your investment in that new Internet stock a sign of stock market savvy or an act of peculiarly American speculative folly? How has the psychology of investing changed--and not changed--over the last five hundred years? Edward Chancellor examines the nature of speculation--from medieval Europe to the Tulip mania of the 1630s to today's Internet stock craze. A contributing writer to The Financial Times and The Economist, looks at both the psychological and economic forces that drive people to bet their money in markets; how markets are made, unmade, and manipulated; and who wins when speculation runs rampant. Drawing colorfully on the words of such speculators as Sir Isaac Newton, Daniel Defoe, Ivan Boesky, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Devil Take the Hindmost is part history, part social science, and purely illuminating: an erudite and hugely entertaining book that is more timely today than ever before.