To be honest, I thought I had a copy of this around here somewhere but my archivist checked the app on his phone and informs me that, unless I snuck a copy in without asking him to scan it into the app yet again, that book does not reside in my collection.

This delightful book is a romp through the times that people literally lost their minds: witch hunts, alchemy, the South Sea Bubble. 17th century tulip mania, in which the Dutch invested in tulip bulbs as if they were NFTs or bitcoin. MacKay would have a ball these days: those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.

This book is extraordinarily popular with economists¹ and, if I did have a copy, it would be on the top shelf, next to my Freakonomics collection and Thomas Friedman. While the stories are fun, the writing is a little dated and it didn’t grip me. I wanted to like this book – with a title like that! – but it was a struggle, like that long-haired guy in the leather jacket who should have been cool but really just wanted to play you certain jokes from his Monty Python albums over and over and mansplain them in reverent tones.²

It is ironic that this book had a surge in popularity in the 1980s. Ironic for two reasons: first, because it was originally published in the 1841 and all the people buying it in the 1980s thought it was a new book; and second, because the 80s and 90s – the coming of age of GenX – were enthralled in the popular delusions of crowds. Every generation has their fads and obsessions³ but I think that GenX for all our detachment, is the worst. You’re welcome.

When I was in college, the fad was comic books. But you couldn’t just read them, I was schooled, thou must not read them whilst consuming food nor beverage, thy hands must be clean, and thou must hold the sacred book delicately by the edges without bend of page or crack of spine and, upon completing the reading, ensconce it in bag and acid-free board, and deposit it gently in the sacred acid-free cardboard storage receptacle. This was because someday a title in your collection would be worth enough money to justify your weekly investment, despite what your mom says.⁴

The first book I witnessed causing a rush like this was Batman: The Official Book of the Movie. I’m not usually susceptible to these fads but the demand was so great and people were so sure that this book would be worth something someday, that I bought a copy. I bought a copy and didn’t even see the movie. Cue eye roll.⁵

A little mini-delusion was Satanic Verses. I was working in a bookstore off Wall Street at the time and, after the death threats kicked in, yuppie suits bought it like crazy.⁶ And then returned it like crazy when they realized it was literature – ew! This is why the stock market crashes over and over – these guys on Wall Street rush towards trends like lemmings⁷ – without realizing what they’re rushing towards – and rush away from them just as quickly.

Then there was the Madonna: Sex book. Determined to make this a collector’s item, the publisher released it in a sealed Mylar package⁸ and pumped up the investment value in the media. When it came out, some people bought two copies, one to open and – er – enjoy; and one to seal in a climate-controlled vault for later resale. And then it was discovered that there had been a production error and some copies were defective – creating a blind box situation: you didn’t know if the copy you bought was one of the defective copies or not. And you couldn’t tell without opening it, which then destroyed the value. Holy Schrödinger’s cat, Batman!

I gave into this fad, too. And never opened my copy. It sat, pristine, in the very back of the bottom shelf (trim size, very large). Unfortunately, it has become apparent that my cat has discovered it. My cat has a death-wish which she is determined to execute via the consumption of plastic bags. Given the opportunity, she eats sandwich bags (leaving only the zip lock), dry-cleaning bags (I have to un-bag my clothes before bringing them into the apartment), grocery bags, garbage bags, whatever. You don’t realize how much plastic is in your home until you have to get rid of it all. And you don’t realize how much plastic people bring with them until your cat crawls into their carry-on to get to the plastic, bad hostess!

I don’t know why I didn’t realize that the cat would consider Sex fair game, but she does. Copies are now worth – according to the interweb – $400-$800… but I assume that is without tiny teeth marks on the corner.⁹

I do not know why we do these things, why we “invest” in things that, really, are not good investments. We get caught up in the thrill of the hunt and then kick ourselves later. (I keep the Batman book really only to remind myself not to be such an idiot.) Or we hold onto six boxes of comic books, convinced that someday our New Mutants #11 or Grim Jack will be worth the effort we put into collecting and storing them.⁸ Once you’ve committed to an idea publicly and extensively, it is particularly challenging to let yourself admit that the idea is, well, stupid.

So I’m going to give you an out: you can laugh at yourself. Say you came to your senses. Look down on the poor slobs who still believe. And just loftily say, “Oh, that was before I realized that it’s X that is the real deal.”

Or, when you meet the Buddha on the road, you can just kill him.

---

¹ For a laugh, scroll to the bottom of the Wikipedia entry, where they quote a whooole bunch of economists talking about the influence this book had on them.

² Don’t get me wrong – I really like Monty Python and could happily have spent hours listening to their albums and appreciating the subtle ridiculousness of their humor. But sometimes I girl just wants a little something else from a long-haired guy in a leather jacket.

³ Eating tide pods, I don’t get it.

⁴ Moms and their stupid common sense, always casting aspersions on our pretensions! One of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite movies is that scene in Lost Boys where the Michael’s new friends jump off a bridge so he does, too. Classic. And where does his brother meet the Frog brothers? In a comic book store.

⁵ Current value: south of what I paid for it.

⁶ Not wanting our display set on fire – as was rumored to have happened in another bookstore – we gift-wrapped and pre-bagged our copies and kept them behind the counter. If you asked for them in the right tone of voice, we rang it up and slipped it to you on the down-low.

⁷ Poor lemmings. The truth is that lemmings do not, when overpopulated, rush mindlessly to hurle themselves off a cliff into the sea. This was a myth and, when they were filming that – could it have been a Disney? – nature movie, the film-makers so wanted to capture this “truth” that they threw the lemmings off the cliff. And yet, lemmings are memorialized in our language for their propensity to rush towards destruction with the passion of congress-people stampeding to out-crazy each other.

⁸ Sealing Sex in Mylar had the added benefit of pulling the rug out from under the Tipper crowd, who was sure to complain that children would look at it – but children couldn’t look at it because it was sealed in Mylar, so take that! And because you couldn’t get a copy of it.

⁹ Make me an offer.