Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation

An expanded and updated edition of Edward Chancellor's study of financial speculation from early modern times to the present. Devil Take the Hindmost traces speculation from ancient Rome through the modern era. Chancellor examines tulipomania in 1630s Holland, stockjobbing in London's Exchange Alley, and the South Sea Bubble of 1720, which prompted Sir Isaac Newton to remark, "I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of the people." The book covers the Gilded Age, nineteenth-century railway mania, the Roaring Twenties and the 1929 crash, junk bonds, the Japanese bubble economy, and Information Age day traders. This edition includes new material on the dot-com bubble and cryptocurrency, offering historical perspective on recurring patterns in financial markets.