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Edward Chancellor

Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation Paperback – June 1, 2000

by Edward Chancellor (Author)

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A lively, original, and challenging history of stock market speculation from the 17th century to present day.

Is your investment in that new Internet stock a sign of stock market savvy or an act of peculiarly American speculative folly? How has the psychology of investing changed—and not changed—over the last five hundred years?

In Devil Take the Hindmost, Edward Chancellor traces the origins of the speculative spirit back to ancient Rome and chronicles its revival in the modern world: from the tulip scandal of 1630s Holland, to “stockjobbing” in London's Exchange Alley, to the infamous South Sea Bubble of 1720, which prompted Sir Isaac Newton to comment, “I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.”

Here are brokers underwriting risks that included highway robbery and the “assurance of female chastity”; credit notes and lottery tickets circulating as money; wise and unwise investors from Alexander Pope and Benjamin Disraeli to Ivan Boesky and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

From the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties, from the nineteenth century railway mania to the crash of 1929, from junk bonds and the Japanese bubble economy to the day-traders of the Information Era, Devil Take the Hindmost tells a fascinating story of human dreams and folly through the ages.

Print length

400 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Plume
Publication date

June 1, 2000
Dimensions

6 x 0.79 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0452281806
ISBN-13

978-0452281806
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Editorial Reviews

Review

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

From the Back Cover

Devil Take the Hindmost is a lively, original, and challenging history of stock market speculation from the seventeenth century to the present day. Edward Chancellor traces the origins of the speculative spirit back to ancient Rome and chronicles its revival in the modern world: from the tulip scandal of 1630s Holland, to "stockjobbing" in London's Exchange Alley (where wine sold at auction by an "inch of a candle"), to the infamous South Sea Bubble of 1719, which prompted investor Sir Isaac Newton to comment, "I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people". Here are brokers underwriting risks that included highway robbery and the "assurance of female chastity"; credit notes and lottery tickets circulating as money; wise and unwise investors from Alexander Pope and Benjamin Disraeli to Ivan Boesky and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

From the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties, from the railway mania of nineteenth-century America to the crash of 1929, from junk bonds and the Japanese bubble economy to day-traders of the Information Era, Devil Take the Hindmost tells a fascinating story of human dreams and folly through the ages.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Plume; Reissue edition (June 1, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0452281806
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0452281806
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.79 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #34,096 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #13 in Futures Trading (Books)
- #45 in Business Encyclopedias
- #58 in Theory of Economics

Customer Reviews:
249 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		72%
4 star		11%
3 star		11%
2 star		2%
1 star		4%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Certiorari

Read it every couple years

Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2019

Verified Purchase

This is the single best guide to financial history that's ever been published. And as you read through it, you will recognize trends and forces that are acting today which are not so different from what has been going on in markets for centuries. I read it every couple years and there's always something pertinent to what's happening. And today -- with Trump touting a new all time high in the markets -- I can't help but stop on these lines (quoting Daniel Defoe from the 1600s): "On numerous occasions we find politicians stimulating speculative manias for their own gain. . . . 'When Statesmen turn jobbers, the state may be jobb’d.'” Indeed.

14 people found this helpful

Helpful

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

Entertaining and Quite Interesting Book About (gasp!) Markets and Speculation

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2017

Verified Purchase

Ah, the oft-asked question: "How long will people keep buying the lipstick-painted pigs that others are selling?"

Until they don't. And that is what lies at the center of fear and greed, humankind's great motivators. (Not love and hate. Those are just variations on the same theme.)

Chancellor does an admirable job of making an incredibly boring subject human, emotional, and funny (my apologies to those who think finance and markets are super interesting—out of context they are, but relative to most other things in life, they aren't). But let's get back to what matters, Chancellor's book. He makes the subject interesting by bringing the greatest manias in history alive—tulip mania, gold, the South Seas bubble, and railroad stocks, among other more contemporary bubbles and manias.

Entertaining and highly recommended if you like history and psychology. Chancellor skillfully brings to life the psyches of the speculators as well as accurately portraying the social and political landscapes that existed when the bubbles began.

A similar book with some overlap but a somewhat different tone and style is Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, Seventh Edition .

15 people found this helpful

Helpful

Daniel Ferris

The No. 1 history of financial speculation

Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2018

Verified Purchase

Absolutely the single best history of financial speculation. Chancellor seems to have assimilated just about everything one could on all the major speculative episodes, from ancient origins through the 1990s.

There's not much else to say. If you're an investor, this is a must-read history of how things can go horribly wrong in financial markets.

In fact, with U.S. equities bumping against all-time high valuations (in mid-2018), this is the perfect moment to take your time and read through this book. It'll show you all the ways you might be getting swept up in speculative excess, of which you might not be aware, even if you're invested in the greatest businesses that have ever existed.

World Dominating Dividend Growers: Income Streams that Never Go Down

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

D. P. S. Chubert

A serviceable and useful read.

Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2020

Verified Purchase

There isn't any original historiography here, nor is there any surprising or counter-intuitive thinking. And some of his policy conclusions are down-right naive.

On the other hand, I read the book from cover to cover. Why? Well, if you want a primer on the South Sea bubble, or what the heck went on in Japan during the 1980s, it's quite useful. Likewise, if you want case studies of the role of ill-advised dregulation, or regulatory capture, or con-men and blind, euphoric greed in driving bubbles, read this book. After all, you do need to know this stuff these days!

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

High Caliber

Book way too J-U-M-P-Y. A chaotic mish-mash of facts.

Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2021

Verified Purchase

The book is only about 350 pages novel size yet it attempts to cover 500 years of speculative history. The author tries to put in everything, including minute details but fails at writing a succinct book. In the first 25 pages, you get about 500 different names, events, times, places, numerical figures, etc. The first 50 pages, you get about double that number and so on. The book jumps from topic to topic, name to name, like a tick. There are almost no transition paragraphs or sentences or headings.

The book tries too hard to present everything, and in the end, winds up presenting nothing very well. The details in the book draw no conclusion. After reading the book you are no better off able to pick stocks than before you started. The theme of "there was a bubble; then came a crash, and people lost money" repeats itself. Other than "buyer beware" before you buy into a bubble and the hackneyed expression "history repeats itself", there was no "so what" answered in the book.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Mr RA

THIS TIME IS NOT DIFFERENT!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 31, 2018

Verified Purchase

Edward Chancellor investigates the stock market from an academic perspective. Shockingly Chancellor shows time after time humans falling prey to the same greed and irrationality. The question is when will the next financial earthquake happen?

2 people found this helpful

Thomas Heaton

Speculate on this.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 11, 2018

Verified Purchase

Worth reading if you're thinking about it.

Artjoms Krumpans

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 2, 2018

Verified Purchase

Excellent book.

Shashank V. Nerurkar

Historical Perspective of Financial Speculation

Reviewed in India on September 9, 2019

Verified Purchase

Devil Take The Hindmost is very informative book which covers the history of financial speculation from the third century. The author has narrated relevant details from various sources which reflects the scholarly research undertaken by him. The major speculative bubbles such as tulip mania, south sea bubble, railway network in Britain and US, automobile revolution in US, the crash of 1929, junk bonds mania, the Japanese bubble of 1980 and havoc created by derivatives and hedge funds after 1990 are covered in great details. One realizes that not much has changed as far as factors that lead to financial speculation over the history. The reader will be better equipped to compare the conditions in financial markets with historical perspective. The author could have avoided bias against the Republicans in US and Conservatives in Britain as their opposition has not done any better in managing the financial speculation. The book is a bit dated and as such do not cover the dot-com bubble and 2008 financial crisis. The book is great read for all participants in financial markets.

One person found this helpful

Subrata

Great Book on History of Speculation

Reviewed in India on August 24, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book is unique in the area of digging the information of madness of speculation in the History to recent past. This book is must read for every one who work in stock market and do not want to ruin his money in stock maket. It is not just a book it is the ultimate guid of a person to be safe in stock market without the chance of loosing his money and worthful book not only for today, but also for tommorows ahead.

One person found this helpful

See all reviews

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