Here are 100 books that Victims of Groupthink fans have personally recommended if you like
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My father was a NASA scientist during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, so while most people knew the Space Race as a spectacle of thundering rockets and grainy lunar footage, I remember the very human costs and excitement of scientific progress. My space-cadet years come in snippets–the emotional break in my dad’s voice when Neil Armstrong hopped around the Moon; the strange peace I felt as I bobbed on a surfboard and watched another Saturn 1b flame into the sky. Later, as a journalist and author, I would see that such moments are couched in societal waves as profound and mysterious as the wheeling of hundreds of starlings overhead.
Though not a volume pertaining to “hard science,” Mackay’s book is an early and essential inquiry into “group psychology” long before the phrase was coined. I used this and Kuhn’s books as background when writing World on Fire.
Why do perfectly respectable people act against their own self-interests, often violently, I wondered, when drawn into the seductive folds of a crowd? Mackay wrote his first edition in 1841, just a few decades after the convulsions that swallowed up Priestley and Lavoisier, then updated it in 1852: he chronicled the spreading group madness of such historical phenomena as the South Sea Bubble, “alchymists,” the Crusades, witch manias, and the “popular admiration of great thieves.”
Mackay’s 1852 preface crystallized his theme with the question: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds while they only recover their senses slowly and one…
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a history of popular folly by Charles Mackay. The book chronicles its targets in three parts: "National Delusions," "Peculiar Follies," and "Philosophical Delusions." Learn why intelligent people do amazingly stupid things when caught up in speculative edevorse. The subjects of Mackay's debunking include alchemy, beards (influence of politics and religion on), witch-hunts, crusades and duels. Present day writers on economics, such as Andrew Tobias, laud the three chapters on economic bubbles.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I have produced twenty books/DVDs and three academic papers on finance and social-mood theory. I also write a monthly publication on markets titled The Elliott Wave Theorist. For a bio, visit robertprechter.com. My recommended titles convey financial markets’ nonrational nature in a visceral way. If you understand that feature, if you feel it, you will have a fighting chance to succeed at investing.
This is one of my favorite books because rather than observing the follies of others, this author details his own. Reading it is like watching a tragedy when you already know the well-meaning protagonist is going to die.
The author chose to remain anonymous for obvious reasons: He thought he was a rare fool. But getting wiped out happens all the time, to many people. If you want to experience vicariously a dangerous thrill ride that you may or may not already have taken, this is your ticket. The book is out of print and hard to find.
This is the totally galvanizing confession of an amateur investor who at first made money in the stock market and then tried to make money faster.... With a directness that startles, with specific references to specific stock transactions, with an abundance of detail unique in investment literature, the author takes the reader on a devastating roller-coaster ride through the market. From the "hot" tip and the impulsive phone-order to buy or sell, to the verdict in next morning's financial pages; from the chase after people who "know their way around," to the frantic switching of brokers and systems; from the…
I have produced twenty books/DVDs and three academic papers on finance and social-mood theory. I also write a monthly publication on markets titled The Elliott Wave Theorist. For a bio, visit robertprechter.com. My recommended titles convey financial markets’ nonrational nature in a visceral way. If you understand that feature, if you feel it, you will have a fighting chance to succeed at investing.
Over 100 years ago, a stockbroker wondered why his clients lost money over a full cycle in the stock market. After all, if stocks were back to where they started, shouldn’t they have broken even? He found that at bottoms, investors were cautious short-term traders, whereas at tops, they were confident long-term owners.
This little booklet is available inexpensively on Amazon.
The circulation of a mere rumor that the Morgan interests are accumulating Steel or that the Standard Oil crowd is getting out of St. Paul is sure at any time to create a market following. Most of the tips that are hawked about the Street are based on the supposition that somebody-or-other of consequence is buying or selling certain stocks. I do not know of a single case where anyone has been able to make money consistently by following information of this character, even when the information comes to him first hand. -from "A Speculative Decision" In 1917, an insider…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
My expertise regarding the approaching World War III: My father—John Bradley—fought in the horrible battle of Iwo Jima. My young future dad’s best friend—Ralph Ignatowski—was tortured to death underground for three days. My father was forced to find his body. It’s all covered in my book Flags of Our Fathers and the Steven Spielberg/Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. I have spent my adult life interviewing victims of war and produced five books about war’s inanity and horror.
This book helps us understand why all the sheep around us are illogically but emotionally walking over the cliff into World War III.
We imagine ourselves as individual agents making our own free will choices, but actually, we are walking, talking bundles of feelings who desperately wish to be judged by other sheep as good members of a tribe. We move as a herd, and to war again the crowd is going. We chant, “Follow the Leader.” But we follow the followers.
One of the most influential works of social psychology in history, The Crowd was highly instrumental in creating this field of study by analyzing, in detail, mass behavior. The book had a profound impact not only on Freud but also on such twentieth-century masters of crowd control as Hitler and Mussolini — both of whom may have used its observations as a guide to stirring up popular passions. In the author's words, "The masses have never thirsted after the truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim."…
I’m a political scientist who specializes in US foreign policy. I’ve been interested in war and peace – and avoiding the former – for as long as I can remember. More than anything else, I wish I could convince Americans of how safe they are, relatively speaking, and how safe they can remain if only we make wise decisions moving forward. The future is brighter than we think.
The current war in Ukraine cannot be understood without reference to the rampant misunderstandings and misperceptions that animate both sides.
This book is the bible of misperception, and for my money, the greatest book ever written about international politics. In it, Jervis explains how countries rarely understand one another; misperception is the rule in national security, not the exception. And those misperceptions all point in one direction: They make other actors appear more belligerent than they are.
Because of predictable psychological processes, wetend to think that theycan’t be trusted....and as a result, cycles of hostility and misperception follow. And finally, war.
If I could get presidents to read one book of political science, this would be it.
Since its original publication in 1976, Perception and Misperception in International Politics has become a landmark book in its field, hailed by the New York Times as "the seminal statement of principles underlying political psychology." This new edition includes an extensive preface by the author reflecting on the book's lasting impact and legacy, particularly in the application of cognitive psychology to political decision making, and brings that analysis up to date by discussing the relevant psychological research over the past forty years. Jervis describes the process of perception (for example, how decision makers learn from history) and then explores common…
I am a historian at the University of Maryland, College Park. In the past forty years, I have published six books and many articles on twentieth-century German history including Reactionary Modernism: Technology Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich; Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys; Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World; and Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967-1989. My personal interest in German history began at home. My father was one of those very fortunate German Jews who found refuge in the United States before Hitler closed the borders and launched the Holocaust.
Radosh and Radosh offer a compelling and dramatic history of Truman’s decision to support Jewish emigration to Palestine in 1947, and to recognize the state of Israel in 1948. They examine Truman’s dilemmas as he made the recognition decision against the advice of the leaders of his own State Department, including his own Secretary of State George Marshall. A Safe Haven offers a careful and essential guide to American politics regarding the Zionist issue, and to the combination of political and religious arguments that were decisive in Truman’s decision making.
“[This] revelatory account of Truman's vital contributions to Israel's founding. . .is told. . . with an elegance informed by thorough research." —Wall Street Journal
"Even knowing how the story ends, A Safe Haven had me sitting on the edge of my seat.” —Cokie Roberts
A dramatic, detailed account of the events leading up to the creation of a Jewish homeland and the true story behind President Harry S. Truman’s controversial decision to recognize of the State of Israel in 1948, drawn from Truman’s long-lost diary entries and other previously unused archival materials.
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
Born to Irish parents in London, the conflict in Northern Ireland was a subject of discussion (but not debate) throughout my childhood. My understanding of the conflict was shaped by the distance we were from it and the (often romanticized) history of Ireland that was shared with me. I then spent many years studying the conflict and found myself agreeing with the view of Paul Anderson (used as the epigram to a book I chose for this list), ‘I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which when you looked at it the right way did not become still more complicated.’ But I believe we still need to look.
I am sometimes put off by ‘big’ sprawling works of history, that cover hundreds of years in hundreds of pages and may end up sitting on my shelf both goading and embarrassing me for my failure to do them the courtesy of finishing them. (Although admittedly, maybe looking good when people pop around!).
Paul Bew’s engaging examination of over 200 years of Irish history is an exception to this. Written by one of Ireland’s most eminent historians, it manages to combine academic rigor with accessibility (no mean feat). Bew offers a survey of the development and course of conflict in Ireland as well as an analysis of the decisions (and mistakes) made by key leaders along the way.
It covers a period much longer than the years Northern Ireland has existed as a political entity, but I found the analysis helpful in explaining its emergence and development.
The French revolution had an electrifying impact on Irish society. The 1790s saw the birth of modern Irish republicanism and Orangeism, whose antagonism remains a defining feature of Irish political life. The 1790s also saw the birth of a new approach to Ireland within important elements of the British political elite, men like Pitt and Castlereagh. Strongly influenced by Edmund Burke, they argued that Britain's strategic interests were best served by a policy of catholic emancipation and political integration in Ireland. Britain's failure to achieve this objective, dramatised by the horrifying tragedy of the Irish famine of 1846-50, in which…
I’m a former economics professor and a member of the Australian Parliament. I’ve written over ten books on policy, politics, and economics. As someone who enjoys fresh ideas, believes in kindness over hate, loves democracy, and thrives on international engagement, I’m deeply concerned about the rise of populism and the risk that it spills into authoritarianism. Only by understanding the causes and consequences of populism can we help address the threat and shape a fairer, more prosperous, and safer world.
Anne Applebaum's book is an engaging meld of reportage and personal anecdotes, which explores why so many people have turned towards authoritarianism and illiberal populism. With a particular focus on Poland, Hungary, and the United States, Applebaum illustrates how populist movements exploit societal fears and divisions to gain and consolidate power.
She argues that populism's appeal lies in its simplistic answers to complex problems and its promise of a return to a mythical, idealized past. For Applebaum, those who become populists aren’t just strangers—they’re her former friends, and she wrestles with the question of why people she once admired have come to support anti-democratic, polarising, and authoritarian governments.
Curious about what democratic governments can do? Check out Applebaum's 2024 book, Autocracy, Inc., The Dictators Who Want to Rule the World.
A FINANCIAL TIMES, ECONOMIST AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020
'The most important non-fiction book of the year' David Hare
In the years just before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, people from across the political spectrum in Europe and America celebrated a great achievement, felt a common purpose and, very often, forged personal friendships. Yet over the following decades the euphoria evaporated, the common purpose and centre ground gradually disappeared, extremism rose once more and eventually - as this book compellingly relates - the relationships soured too.
Anne Applebaum traces this history in an unfamiliar…
Robert Hutton is the author of Agent Jack, the previously untold tale of the surprisingly large number of British people who tried to help Hitler win World War 2. He spent a decade and a half following British prime ministers around the world for Bloomberg and now writes parliamentary sketches for The Critic while researching intelligence history.
I have a vivid memory of opening the file on Britain’s efforts to bring America into the war, declassified only recently, and being astonished at the things that had gone on. Hemming’s book tells this amazing story and raises the ethical question of whether Britain’s end – defeating Hitler – was justified by its means – spreading fake news in the US and even interfering in its politics.
"A revelatory and wholly fascinating work of history. Superbly researched and written with gripping fluency, this lost secret of World War II espionage finally has its expert chronicler." - WILLIAM BOYD
'Gripping and intoxicating, it unfolds like the best screenplay.' NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE
The gripping story of a propaganda campaign like no other: the covert British operation to manipulate American public opinion and bring the US into the Second World War.
When William Stephenson - "our man in New York" - arrived in the United States towards the end of June 1940 with instructions from the head of MI6 to 'organise'…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
Hi, my name is Nick, and I’m a recovering rockist. I’ve collected records and vintage gear; I’ve owned Ray Coleman biographies. I’ve played in garage bands that did terrible punk-rock covers of songs like Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love.” I even used to subscribe to Rolling Stone magazine. And most embarrassingly, I believed in the power of rock – to effect political change, to free people’s bodies and minds. But if once I was a true believer, today I’ve become a rock ’n’ roll skeptic. And I hope that this list might help you rethink everything you thought you knew about rock, too.
During the first decades of the Cold War, the export of American popular culture – and in particular, music – played an important role in projecting soft power abroad.
Fosler-Lussier’s deeply researched and beautifully written book tells the story of the musicians who travelled abroad as part of State Department programs, and how they negotiated an image of the United States in – and through – the musical encounters they had worldwide. An essential Cold War history of how certain sounds became American.
During the Cold War, thousands of musicians from the United States traveled the world, sponsored by the U.S. State Department's Cultural Presentations program. Performances of music in many styles classical, rock 'n' roll, folk, blues, and jazz competed with those by traveling Soviet and mainland Chinese artists, enhancing the prestige of American culture. These concerts offered audiences around the world evidence of America's improving race relations, excellent musicianship, and generosity toward other peoples. Through personal contacts and the media, musical diplomacy also created subtle musical, social, and political relationships on a global scale. Although born of state-sponsored tours often conceived…
