Markets, Mobs & Mayhem: A Modern Look at the Madness of Crowds

Fear epidemics have plagued people for centuries, and in the past year Americans have weathered anthrax scares, fears of the end of good economic times and fears of terrorism. In his new book, Markets, Mobs & Mayhem: A Modern Look at the Madness of Crowds, Robert Menschel, senior director of the Goldman Sachs Group, shows that, logically, it's ""easy to counter"" these fear epidemics, yet these epidemics and crowd behavior are often extremely powerful forces that can cause rational people to think and act irrationally. The author sets out to show readers ""how to escape the crowd"" and ""what happens when you can't."" He adroitly and sometimes comically charts Holland's mid-1600s' ""tulipmania,"" Chicken Licken's fright about a falling sky, a 1938 panic outbreak spurred on by a radio dramatization of H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds, the Ku Klux Klan's violent acts and more, offering concrete suggestions for keeping one's head when the masses seem to be losing theirs. His book, which includes a foreword by William Safire, is a timely, intelligent and amusing study of peer pressure's extreme capabilities. Agent, Mort Janklow.