Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

A nineteenth-century classic on crowd psychology is circulating on Hacker News. 'Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,' first published in eighteen forty-one by Charles Mackay, catalogs financial manias, social panics, and the mechanisms by which crowds collectively lose their minds. From tulip mania to witch hunts, Mackay's observations remain a timeless window into why groups of otherwise rational people can believe or do absurd things. The full text is available free on Project Gutenberg.

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