Devil Take the Hindmost

In Devil Take the Hindmost, Edward Chancellor traces the origins of the speculative spirit back to the publicani of ancient Rome and chronicles its revival in the modern world: from the tulip scandal of 1630s Holland and ‘stockjobbing’ in Londons 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.

This revised and updated edition analyses with characteristic liveliness and precision the end of the dot-com bubble, the property value speculations that culminated in the 2008 financial crisis, the ‘Everything Bubble’ of the pandemic years and the gigantic speculations of Artificial Intelligence.

This is the story of human hopes and folly through the ages, populated by 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 Hillary Rodham Clinton and well-known leaders of our own time.