Sea of Stories

Book description

Greed, foolishness, and outright craziness—human history is full of examples of irrational mass behavior, from the oft-cited Tulip Mania of the 1600s to the dot-“bomb” bubble of recent years, not to mention our most recent adventure in dubious mortgages. And money is not the only area in which we find ourselves following the madness of the crowd. The list of foolish obsessions, past and present, is long and amusing, and includes: • mass hysterias (War of the Worlds broadcast) • moral panics (Salem witch hunt and trials) • fashion fads (Hammer pants) • cultural manias (Beatlemania) • technophobias (Y2K bug) • beyond-our-control panics (12/21/12 end of the world) Each entry offers a description of the conditions that caused the situation, examples of extreme behavior, the consequences (immediate and ultimate), and a lesson we might find helpful. Will we ever learn? Perhaps not, but it’s both entertaining and enlightening to see how the parade of idiocy continues to play out.

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