The Delusions Of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups
William J. Bernstein
Feb 2021 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Tom Parks
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17 hr 19 min
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About this audiobook
Inspired by Charles Mackay's 19th-century classic Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Bernstein engages with mass delusion with the same curiosity and passion, but armed with the latest scientific research that explains the biological, evolutionary, and psychosocial roots of human irrationality. Bernstein tells the stories of dramatic religious and financial mania in western society over the last 500 years-from the Anabaptist Madness that afflicted the Low Countries in the 1530s to the dangerous End-Times beliefs that animate ISIS and pervade today's polarized America; and from the South Sea Bubble to the Enron scandal and dot com bubbles of recent years. Through Bernstein's supple prose, the participants are as colorful as their motivation, invariably "the desire to improve one's well-being in this life or the next." As revealing about human nature as they are historically significant, Bernstein's chronicles reveal the huge cost and alarming implications of mass mania: for example, belief in dispensationalist End-Times has over decades profoundly affected US Middle East policy. Bernstein observes that if we can absorb the history and biology of mass delusion, we can recognize it more readily in our own time, and avoid its frequently dire impact.
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About the author
William J. Bernstein is a retired neurologist and cofounder of the investment management firm Efficient Frontier Advisors. He is the author of three finance books-The Intelligent Asset Allocator, The Four Pillars of Investing, and The Investor's Manifesto-as well as four history books.
Since recording his first book for the Kansas Audio Reader Network in 1985, Tom Parks has enjoyed giving voice to stories. He has been nominated for Audie Awards and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards, and reviewers have described his performances as "conversational," "energetic," and "sincere."
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