What do you think?
Rate this book
A Colorful History of Popular Delusions
This eclectic history of unusual crowd behavior describes a rich assortment of mass phenomena ranging from the amusing and quirky to the shocking and deplorable. What do fads, crazes, manias, urban legends, moral panics, riots, stampedes, and other mass expressions of emotion have in common? By creating a typology of such behavior, past and present, the authors show how common extraordinary group reactions to fear or excitement are. And they offer insights into how these sometimes dangerous mob responses can be avoided.We may not be surprised to read about the peculiarities of the European Middle Ages, when superstition was like the meowing nuns of France, "tarantism" (a dancing mania) in Italy, or the malicious anti-Semitic poison-well scares. But similar phenomena show up in our own era. Examples include the social-networking hysteria of 2012, which resulted in uncontrollable twitching by teenage girls in Leroy, NY; the "phantom bus terrorist" of 2004 in Vancouver, Canada; and the itching outbreak of 2000 in South Africa.Vivid, detailed, and thoroughly researched, this is a fascinating overview of collective human behavior in its many unusual forms.
368 pages, Paperback
First published October 13, 2015
23 people are currently reading
399 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
February 17, 2021
People are crazy and times are strange – Bob Dylan
If this book is any indication, people have always been crazy and times have always been strange.
This book is a history and analysis of one particular subject: the way people sometimes behave when they get together in groups, whether those groups be local (people gathered together in one particular set of geographical co-ordinates) or nonlocal (people gathered together in many different locations around a particular set of beliefs or behaviours) or a combination of both. In his own words:
'This book is a guide to recognizing and understanding the dynamics of collective obsessions and follies, from outlandish beliefs and baseless convictions, to short-term preoccupations with trivial objects or ideas such as fads.'
The typological breakdown is quite detailed: social panics, enthusiasms, rumours, gossip, fads, crazes, manias, urban legends, flight panics/stampedes, anxiety hysteria, repression/oppression based hysteria, community threats, moral panics, and riots. Some of these are completely benign. The hula hoop fad is an example of this. However, some are far from benign. Social panics that incubate in an atmosphere of anxiety and uncertainty are an example. Panic about Muslims in the United States is a current example of this. Before the Muslims, it was the Catholics. Before the Catholics, it was..... well, who? The Quakers? Witches? Jews? How far back do you want to go? Some things could be benign or malevolent. A rumour could be relatively benign (Tom slept with Jill and now Tom and Sally are no longer a couple) but it could be very deadly (the rumours that Jews were poisoning wells in Europe during the Middle Ages ended up in the torture, execution, or deportation of many people).
Poisoned Halloween candy, Paul McCartney being replaced by an imposter after he died in a car crash, poisoned food products, barking nuns, alligators in the sewers, mass group suicides, inner city riots..... the only thing you won't read about in this book is the kitchen sink.
This book was interesting, at times amusing, and to be completely honest, also a little scary. We're all human. We are all capable of being carried away on a tidal wave of group think and mass hysteria. Is it entirely obvious at any given moment that we haven't been? It is easy to look back at earlier periods in history and shake our heads at human folly but perhaps we fail to imagine that someone might be doing the same about us one day because, of course, we have the tendency to think we have finally arrived at peak rationality.
I do have one criticism. The author failed to introduce and deal with evidence that might dispute some of his assertions. If a person were to read this book with no further knowledge of some of the occurrences he documents in this book, they might assume he has laid all the cards on the table. I could give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was unaware of any such evidence. But then, if you are really trying to write a straightforward unbiased history, isn't it your job to do the research and look at all of the data? Still, worth reading, if only as an illumination of such follies as flesh is heir to.
I began this review with a quotation. I might as well make them bookends:
The crowd is untruth – Soren Kierkegaard
If this book is any indication, people have always been crazy and times have always been strange.
This book is a history and analysis of one particular subject: the way people sometimes behave when they get together in groups, whether those groups be local (people gathered together in one particular set of geographical co-ordinates) or nonlocal (people gathered together in many different locations around a particular set of beliefs or behaviours) or a combination of both. In his own words:
'This book is a guide to recognizing and understanding the dynamics of collective obsessions and follies, from outlandish beliefs and baseless convictions, to short-term preoccupations with trivial objects or ideas such as fads.'
The typological breakdown is quite detailed: social panics, enthusiasms, rumours, gossip, fads, crazes, manias, urban legends, flight panics/stampedes, anxiety hysteria, repression/oppression based hysteria, community threats, moral panics, and riots. Some of these are completely benign. The hula hoop fad is an example of this. However, some are far from benign. Social panics that incubate in an atmosphere of anxiety and uncertainty are an example. Panic about Muslims in the United States is a current example of this. Before the Muslims, it was the Catholics. Before the Catholics, it was..... well, who? The Quakers? Witches? Jews? How far back do you want to go? Some things could be benign or malevolent. A rumour could be relatively benign (Tom slept with Jill and now Tom and Sally are no longer a couple) but it could be very deadly (the rumours that Jews were poisoning wells in Europe during the Middle Ages ended up in the torture, execution, or deportation of many people).
Poisoned Halloween candy, Paul McCartney being replaced by an imposter after he died in a car crash, poisoned food products, barking nuns, alligators in the sewers, mass group suicides, inner city riots..... the only thing you won't read about in this book is the kitchen sink.
This book was interesting, at times amusing, and to be completely honest, also a little scary. We're all human. We are all capable of being carried away on a tidal wave of group think and mass hysteria. Is it entirely obvious at any given moment that we haven't been? It is easy to look back at earlier periods in history and shake our heads at human folly but perhaps we fail to imagine that someone might be doing the same about us one day because, of course, we have the tendency to think we have finally arrived at peak rationality.
I do have one criticism. The author failed to introduce and deal with evidence that might dispute some of his assertions. If a person were to read this book with no further knowledge of some of the occurrences he documents in this book, they might assume he has laid all the cards on the table. I could give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was unaware of any such evidence. But then, if you are really trying to write a straightforward unbiased history, isn't it your job to do the research and look at all of the data? Still, worth reading, if only as an illumination of such follies as flesh is heir to.
I began this review with a quotation. I might as well make them bookends:
The crowd is untruth – Soren Kierkegaard
August 22, 2020
This book has a quite interesting topic, some chapters funny, others a little heavier as some delusions can be scarier or more dangerous than others. I even found a chapter quite scary! Humans are really frail in their perceptions.
As an Italian, I am always curious to read how our history is told outside our country, and I was startled that the Italian historian Giuseppe Ripamonti was cited as Josephi Ripamontii (is it English? Latin?). I also found funny that the italian for gossip was written as "pettegolezze", while it should be "pettegolezzo" (singular), "pettegolezzi" (plural)". I trust that it might just have been a typo, but I know most foreigners have difficulties with gender suffixes.
Another thing that I think is different from my country, is that at the end of every chapter there is a short summary. I find it repetitive, but it's not the first time that I see this kind of construction, so probably it's just the genre. Many times it also cited and explained a little about some delusions which were examined further on as popular examples.
One last thing, which I'm not sure I liked, was that sometimes the information given felt a little rushed, approximated. I wish it was a bit more detailed, mostly in telling the examples the first time.
As an Italian, I am always curious to read how our history is told outside our country, and I was startled that the Italian historian Giuseppe Ripamonti was cited as Josephi Ripamontii (is it English? Latin?). I also found funny that the italian for gossip was written as "pettegolezze", while it should be "pettegolezzo" (singular), "pettegolezzi" (plural)". I trust that it might just have been a typo, but I know most foreigners have difficulties with gender suffixes.
Another thing that I think is different from my country, is that at the end of every chapter there is a short summary. I find it repetitive, but it's not the first time that I see this kind of construction, so probably it's just the genre. Many times it also cited and explained a little about some delusions which were examined further on as popular examples.
One last thing, which I'm not sure I liked, was that sometimes the information given felt a little rushed, approximated. I wish it was a bit more detailed, mostly in telling the examples the first time.
September 3, 2022
This one was excellent. It goes through many categories of delusions or hysterias, from very mild to outright riots....and examines specific cases and defines and explains each thing inside and out.
It took me one or two months to get through this book, simply because I wanted to read every word and miss nothing, no part of it.
Very insightful and interesting.
It took me one or two months to get through this book, simply because I wanted to read every word and miss nothing, no part of it.
Very insightful and interesting.
September 26, 2016
"If the advice in this section is to be useful, it is important to heed the lessons and remember we are all susceptible..."
Simultaneously entertaining and sobering, even horrifying, Bartholomew's latest volume is a compilation of those occasions when groups of people have convinced themselves of some very peculiar things. Categorized as "Rumor", "Crazes", "Urban Myth", Classical Mass Hysteria" and "Moral Panics", among others, and ranging from the Middle Ages through to last year, these paint a Goyaesque portrait of humanity - intriguing, yet perhaps not as the subject would prefer to be seen. Batholomew looks for the possible origins of such delusions in circumstance and psychology but is careful to point out that their effects are all too real. The Kissing Bug Scare of 1877 may only have boosted sales of mosquito screens and insecticide, but the death toll from the Well Poisoning rumors of 1348 was in the thousands. Given the heroic scope of the book, even those incidents selected for examination are summarized quickly, but the comprehensive citations should assist anyone desiring to delve deeper. Composed with clarity and empathy, this book would seem to grow more relevant with every passing day. Read the entries on those recent incidents that you accepted as news and reflect that no one is immune.
Simultaneously entertaining and sobering, even horrifying, Bartholomew's latest volume is a compilation of those occasions when groups of people have convinced themselves of some very peculiar things. Categorized as "Rumor", "Crazes", "Urban Myth", Classical Mass Hysteria" and "Moral Panics", among others, and ranging from the Middle Ages through to last year, these paint a Goyaesque portrait of humanity - intriguing, yet perhaps not as the subject would prefer to be seen. Batholomew looks for the possible origins of such delusions in circumstance and psychology but is careful to point out that their effects are all too real. The Kissing Bug Scare of 1877 may only have boosted sales of mosquito screens and insecticide, but the death toll from the Well Poisoning rumors of 1348 was in the thousands. Given the heroic scope of the book, even those incidents selected for examination are summarized quickly, but the comprehensive citations should assist anyone desiring to delve deeper. Composed with clarity and empathy, this book would seem to grow more relevant with every passing day. Read the entries on those recent incidents that you accepted as news and reflect that no one is immune.
December 17, 2016
A great overview of popular delusions. What do the hula hoop and UFO abductions have in common? Read this to find out.
February 22, 2017
This is indeed a fascinating and comprehensive collection of “deluded” crowd behaviours. It includes over 100 well-documented and referenced examples of such behaviours, grouped together into a taxonomy of 14 different ‘categories’. Those categories include rumours and gossip, urban legends, fads, crazes and manias (each has a different definition!), stampedes, panics and riots, and the more intriguing anxiety hysterias and classical mass hysterias.
In each chapter, the authors first take us through their definition of a given category, and then present a group of well-referenced historical examples, describing the circumstances of each mass delusion from start to finish.
Some of the cases revealed are truly fascinating. There are witch hunts, UFO and Big Foot sightings, the urban legends of alligators in sewer systems, and various disturbing cases of ‘motor hysteria’, in which those affected suffer tremors and fits as a result of their mass delusions.
There is also the case of the (in)famous War of the Worlds radio broadcast – this did indeed cause a major community panic, and even loss of life – but not in the United States as I (and perhaps many others) had always understood. In 1938, Orson Wells gained some notoriety by broadcasting a contemporary version of H.G. Welles’ story of invading Martians. The incident was re-popularised in the 1970s made-for-TV movie “The Night that Panicked America”. But the authors of the current book give that incident barely a passing mention as a rather limited ‘small group’ panic. Obviously it caused a stir, but was by no means an actual panicking of all of America.
The story of real significance actually occurred in Ecuador in 1949, when a similar realistic-sounding broadcast of invading aliens was made by a radio station that truly panicked the city of Quito. When the locals learned they had been deceived, they became a rioting angry mob, trashed the radio station and brought about the deaths of 20 people. The impact of the South American incident was clearly more profound than the Orson Wells broadcast, but the former seems to be all but unknown today.
The book is not without its flaws and weaknesses, however. Here are three, in order of importance, beginning with the trivial.
Proofreading . I’ve come to expect the occasional typo in just about every piece of professional writing I read these days. This book seems to have more to its fair share, especially in the first half. And there is also at least one howler where the concluding sentence of a paragraph appears to contradict the original point being made. These editing errors aren’t so numerous to be that big a deal, of course. Or at least, they shouldn’t be. But I found they occurred just often enough to be an annoying distraction.
Referencing . The liberal use of references is a testament to the authors’ expertise and depth of research in the field. However, I was still bugged by a couple of points. When a book contains citations, I’m the type of reader that keeps one thumb in the references and the other as a current page marker, flipping “in real time” between the two whenever a citation appears.
To repeat: The references are one of the strong points of the book. But I was disappointed by (a) the high degree of reliance on secondary sources (many of which didn’t feel fully accurate or persuasive), and (b) the over-use of ibid. If there are only one or two pieces of source material describing a particular event, we only need one or two citations at the end of the paragraph. We don’t need one every second sentence pointing back to the same source.
Treatment of Religious Beliefs
While we have here a well-curated collection of irrational human behaviour in tribes and crowds, I feel that the mass delusions of religious beliefs are let off far too easily. Sure – there is certainly coverage of some religious-inspired oddities, like self-flagellation, the Salem witch hunts, worshiping the image of Jesus in a tortilla, and the Heaven’s Gate and Jonestown mass suicides. However, the field of religious beliefs and practices – the traditions, the psychology, the counter-intuitive rationalisations – is rich for further expansion, and much has been left on the table that could have been explored in this context.
One might fairly argue that dealing with religious beliefs wasn’t the intention here. But if that is so, then the error is in the title of the book itself. Rather than being A Colorful History of Popular Delusions, a more accurate label might have been A Colourful Collection of Irrational Crowd Behaviour. After all, not all rumours and pieces of gossip, or fads, or stampedes or riots, for example, are necessarily driven by “delusion”. On the other hand, why should it be assumed that poisoning oneself in order to board a comet to heaven is any more delusional than, say, the belief that a piece of bread is an actual (not metaphorical) piece of the body of Jesus Christ, or that Muhammed actually ascended to heaven on a winged horse? Delusions of this type are some of the most popular of all time, and are sadly all but neglected here – not simply by example, but as representative of some of the most powerful aspects of human tribal psychology.
Despite its limitations, this is still an excellent collection of material that I can see myself dipping back into from time to time, whenever I want to recall examples of popular, irrational crowd behaviour.
3 out of 5.
In each chapter, the authors first take us through their definition of a given category, and then present a group of well-referenced historical examples, describing the circumstances of each mass delusion from start to finish.
Some of the cases revealed are truly fascinating. There are witch hunts, UFO and Big Foot sightings, the urban legends of alligators in sewer systems, and various disturbing cases of ‘motor hysteria’, in which those affected suffer tremors and fits as a result of their mass delusions.
There is also the case of the (in)famous War of the Worlds radio broadcast – this did indeed cause a major community panic, and even loss of life – but not in the United States as I (and perhaps many others) had always understood. In 1938, Orson Wells gained some notoriety by broadcasting a contemporary version of H.G. Welles’ story of invading Martians. The incident was re-popularised in the 1970s made-for-TV movie “The Night that Panicked America”. But the authors of the current book give that incident barely a passing mention as a rather limited ‘small group’ panic. Obviously it caused a stir, but was by no means an actual panicking of all of America.
The story of real significance actually occurred in Ecuador in 1949, when a similar realistic-sounding broadcast of invading aliens was made by a radio station that truly panicked the city of Quito. When the locals learned they had been deceived, they became a rioting angry mob, trashed the radio station and brought about the deaths of 20 people. The impact of the South American incident was clearly more profound than the Orson Wells broadcast, but the former seems to be all but unknown today.
The book is not without its flaws and weaknesses, however. Here are three, in order of importance, beginning with the trivial.
Proofreading . I’ve come to expect the occasional typo in just about every piece of professional writing I read these days. This book seems to have more to its fair share, especially in the first half. And there is also at least one howler where the concluding sentence of a paragraph appears to contradict the original point being made. These editing errors aren’t so numerous to be that big a deal, of course. Or at least, they shouldn’t be. But I found they occurred just often enough to be an annoying distraction.
Referencing . The liberal use of references is a testament to the authors’ expertise and depth of research in the field. However, I was still bugged by a couple of points. When a book contains citations, I’m the type of reader that keeps one thumb in the references and the other as a current page marker, flipping “in real time” between the two whenever a citation appears.
To repeat: The references are one of the strong points of the book. But I was disappointed by (a) the high degree of reliance on secondary sources (many of which didn’t feel fully accurate or persuasive), and (b) the over-use of ibid. If there are only one or two pieces of source material describing a particular event, we only need one or two citations at the end of the paragraph. We don’t need one every second sentence pointing back to the same source.
Treatment of Religious Beliefs
While we have here a well-curated collection of irrational human behaviour in tribes and crowds, I feel that the mass delusions of religious beliefs are let off far too easily. Sure – there is certainly coverage of some religious-inspired oddities, like self-flagellation, the Salem witch hunts, worshiping the image of Jesus in a tortilla, and the Heaven’s Gate and Jonestown mass suicides. However, the field of religious beliefs and practices – the traditions, the psychology, the counter-intuitive rationalisations – is rich for further expansion, and much has been left on the table that could have been explored in this context.
One might fairly argue that dealing with religious beliefs wasn’t the intention here. But if that is so, then the error is in the title of the book itself. Rather than being A Colorful History of Popular Delusions, a more accurate label might have been A Colourful Collection of Irrational Crowd Behaviour. After all, not all rumours and pieces of gossip, or fads, or stampedes or riots, for example, are necessarily driven by “delusion”. On the other hand, why should it be assumed that poisoning oneself in order to board a comet to heaven is any more delusional than, say, the belief that a piece of bread is an actual (not metaphorical) piece of the body of Jesus Christ, or that Muhammed actually ascended to heaven on a winged horse? Delusions of this type are some of the most popular of all time, and are sadly all but neglected here – not simply by example, but as representative of some of the most powerful aspects of human tribal psychology.
Despite its limitations, this is still an excellent collection of material that I can see myself dipping back into from time to time, whenever I want to recall examples of popular, irrational crowd behaviour.
3 out of 5.
April 23, 2018
An intriguing topic, a wealth of historical anecdotes and examples, and deep knowledge of the sociological phenomenons that have crafted the world we live in. A valuable read in both the perspective it introduces and some fun insights into the world.
If only, the writer's could have turned there immense variety of examples into something more fun, perhaps? The book is pretty dry and boring at parts and while I had couple "oh that's cool" or "man what a weird world" moments, overall it felt like an information overload at times with too many examples proving the same points and too little depth or real insight into these case examples.
Overall an average book with tremendous promise.
If only, the writer's could have turned there immense variety of examples into something more fun, perhaps? The book is pretty dry and boring at parts and while I had couple "oh that's cool" or "man what a weird world" moments, overall it felt like an information overload at times with too many examples proving the same points and too little depth or real insight into these case examples.
Overall an average book with tremendous promise.
April 11, 2020
This is a good general introduction to what the hell's wrong with people sometimes. Groups as large as nations and as small as duos can find several kinds of ways to get inaccurate notions into their heads. Here the authors provide a comprehensive overview of the various forms of popular delusions. Each section begins with an explanation of how a delusion works and then presents several examples from history of the delusion in action. The structure reminded me of Jan Harold Brunvand's approach to urban legends. In an age badly beset by the power of deluded thinking, this exploration provides some crucial perspective on the problem.
June 6, 2018
This was more academic than I was expecting and the format made it very easy to put down and forget to pick it back up again. I still found it very interesting, but the stories felt pretty removed.
October 10, 2019
Interesting read on different types of delusions with specific examples. Also slightly terrifying since in most cases there is no way to not get caught up in one of these.
Read
November 27, 2020Pretty good chapters on fads and crazes
June 18, 2016
The topic of this book is more or less odd, irrational things that people do. It's a compelling read, perhaps in the same way as people love to chase fire engines. The authors made a systematic study of all the different sorts of group delusions and reactions to same. The examples are drawn from a respectable variety of examples, from across the world and across time. The subject matter is well dealt with, considering the nature of it. When you are telling stories about mass hysteria, bigfoot sightings, UFO capture and inexplicable illnesses developed by large groups of people, achieving a narrative that is objective is challenging, but the authors pull it off. I would have like to see some kind of table summarizing and comparing the traits of the various delusions covered, but the final conclusion does do a good job of providing an overview.
May 16, 2016
Rather than merely providing background on a variety of famous hoaxes, delusions, hysterias, fads, and the like, this book does a nice job of putting such phenomena into perspective and identifying trends that accompany them. As a result, it is far more readable than a mere encyclopedia of such phenomena and produces, for its readers, far more to take away and contemplate when they consider examples that the book doesn't bring to light.
March 30, 2016
This was a mildly interesting book, with summaries of various group delusions or madness; all the usual suspects are here: Bigfoot, Salem, meowing nuns. If I were teaching anthropology or psychology, or maybe sociology, I would use this as a required reading (and then assign research papers!). For a casual reader, it's probably just detailed enough.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews