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.
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" A few great chapters, such as: Tulip Mania, Railway Mania. But also, I thought, a lot of unnecessary details and comments, that could have been omitted. "
— Monsegu, 7/30/2021Edward Chancellor is a financial historian, journalist, and investment strategist. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge with first class honors in Modern History, and from St. Antony’s College, Oxford with a Master of Philosophy in Modern History. He is a former deputy US editor for Breakingviews.com and worked for Lazard Brothers in the early 1990s. He is a columnist for Financial Times and has written for numerous other publications.
Nigel Patterson, British audiobook narrator and AudioFile Earphones Award winner, has many credits as a stage, screen, and voiceover actor that influence his powerful characterization across a broad range of genres. A graduate of the University of Oxford, he is fluent in French and Spanish.