Table of Contents

Preface: Devil Take the Hindmost

1. "This Bubble World": The Origins of Financial Speculation
2. Stockjobbing in 'Change Alley: The Projecting Age of the 1690s
3. "The Never-to-Be-Forgot or Forgiven South-Sea Scheme"
4. Fool's Gold: The Emerging Markets of the 1820s
5. "A Ready Communication": The Railway Mania of 1845
6. "Befooled, Bewitched and Bedeviled": Speculation in the Gilded Age
7. The End of a New Era: The Crash of 1929 and Its Aftermath
8. Cowboy Capitalism: From Bretton Woods to Michael Milken
9. Kamikaze Capitalism: The Japanese Bubble Economy of the 1980s

Epilogue: The Case of the Rogue Economists

Notes
For Further Reference
Acknowledgments
Index

About the Author

Edward Chancellor studied history in Great Britain at both Cambridge and Oxford Universities. In the early 1990s he worked for the investment bank Lazard Brothers. He is a freelance journalist, and lives in London.

Reviews

Praise for Devil Take the Hindmost

“An admirably researched and very well written account of speculative insanity from the earliest times to, let no one doubt, the present. Anyone contemplating a stock market venture and certainly anyone now involved should read this book.”—John Kenneth Galbraith

“The greatest hits of financial silliness recounted coherently and...gracefully...Chancellor does a fine job of capturing the atmosphere of the times.”—Forbes magazine

“Entertaining, useful, admirable scholarship...Chancellor seems to have read everything.”—The New York Times Book Review

“The subtle ways in which individual investors become drawn into crowd behavior is a much studied phenomenon, covered brilliantly...in the book Devil Take the Hindmost.”—The Daily Telegraph (London)
 
“The South Sea Company is one of the great bubble and crash stories. Many books have referred to it. One of the finest is Devil Take the Hindmost.”—Debashis Basu, Money Life
 
“Excellent.”—City A.M.
 
“[An] essential history of financial manias.”—The Observer

Praise for Devil Take the Hindmost

"An admirably researched and very well written account of speculative insanity from the earliest times to, let no one doubt, the present. Anyone contemplating a stock market venture and certainly anyone now involved should read this book."-John Kenneth Galbraith

"The greatest hits of financial silliness recounted coherently and...gracefully...Chancellor does a fine job of capturing the atmosphere of the times."-Forbes magazine

"Entertaining, useful, admirable scholarship...Chancellor seems to have read everything."-The New York Times Book Review

"The subtle ways in which individual investors become drawn into crowd behavior is a much studied phenomenon, covered brilliantly...in the book Devil Take the Hindmost."-The Daily Telegraph (London)

"The South Sea Company is one of the great bubble and crash stories. Many books have referred to it. One of the finest is Devil Take the Hindmost."-Debashis Basu, Money Life

"Excellent."-City A.M.

"[An] essential history of financial manias."-The Observer