![]() ![]() While mocking the pseudo-scientific use of magnets to treat disease, he even neatly sums up the power of all charlatans: “Induce belief and blind confidence, and you may do any thing. 0.99 Read with Our Free App Paperback 16.96 1 New from 16.96 EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS AND THE MADNESS OF CROWDS is a popular history of popular folly in human society by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, first published in 1841 but most of which remains incredibly relevent to this day. Above all, Mackay is a compelling storyteller, whatever his topic: haunted houses, phony relics, celebrated highwaymen, the clever guiles of fortune-tellers. ![]() In “The Slow Poisoners,” he discusses this once fashionable mode for eliminating enemies, rightly lingering over the beautiful Marquise de Brinvilliers, the murderer of her father and two brothers (as well as the inspiration for John Dickson Carr’s supreme mystery thriller “ The Burning Court”). Under “Modern Prophecies,” for instance,” Mackay surveys beliefs in the imminent end of the world. Like Robert Burton’s “ Anatomy of Melancholy,” Isaac D’Israeli’s “Curiosities of Literature” and Charles Fort’s “ The Book of the Damned,” “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” is an encyclopedic hodgepodge, the bookish equivalent to Aladdin’s cave of wonders. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds provides a list of history’s ridiculous schemes, fantasies, prophesies witchcraft, faith healers and more. ![]()
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