This book's title and much of its content refer to Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, published in 1841.  The author tells stories from ancient societies and their collapse due to crazed mobs, but his primary field of expertise is financial movements including our own dot.com boom and bust in the 1990's.  Bernstein is a neurologist and I expected that the book would discuss more of the political upheaval of recent years and the psychology of people bonding in extremist causes.  But the author spends a lot of time comparing pretty much any form of fervent spirituality with the religious motivations of violent organizations like ISIS.  Dr. Bernstein is a wonderful writer and certainly knows his history, and this book would be of interest to readers less interested in the roots of today's broad and violent civil unrest as in the philosophies underlying religious beliefs themselves.

The Delusions of Crowds by William J. Bernstein is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in late December.

The concept of people being moved in an act of massive peer pressure and herd mentality to do weird, confusing, and awful things out of jealousy, resentment, greed, latent fear, frenzy, or divine favor. Bernstein pinpoints areas in history during biblical times, the Lutheran reformation, financial and economic busts, precursors to the Industrial Revolution, the annexation of Israel, cataclysmic prophecies through many different occasions, timeframes, in reality and on film; all described very densely and detailed.

The Delusions of Crowds by William J Bernstein is in many ways an updating of Charles Mackay’s Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions. Because they resonate with people and to keep the length of the book manageable, he limited his examples to financial and religious mass manias. In other words, he avoided political, or at least overtly political, manias.

I really enjoyed learning more about these events/periods and even where I knew a little about them Bernstein's depth offered new information and insight for me. No doubt some people who believe that the end-times will be in their lifetimes will find fault with his approach to our current mass maniacs, even to the point of claiming that they are different. Well, same hard to understand book as source material and very similar mindsets, but yeah, different. If you don't believe them, they have zip ties for your hands and a gallows outside. 

That particular delusional group aside, the history, psychology, and neuroscience covered in helping to explain why we, as humans, are so prone to these mass hysterias is intriguing. 

The only reason I deducted a star is because at times I found myself reading the historical accounts, enjoying them, but forgetting what the point of the book was. It all came together, the details were definitely helpful, but at times I felt like I was reading a straightforward history book rather than one with a unifying theme. I don't mean to imply he left the topic, more that I just got so wrapped up in the historical account I lost sight of the purpose.

Highly recommended for readers who wonder how and why these types of things are so common. Also for those who simply enjoy reading well-written accounts of strange historical events.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.