The Man Who Swapped His House for a Tulip

Fernando Trías de Bes narrates the 17th-century Dutch tulip mania — the first great documented speculative bubble in history — as a fable about financial irrationality, greed, and herd thinking. He makes completely comprehensible the psychological mechanisms that lead rational people to pay fortunes for a tulip bulb, connecting the 1636 story to modern bubble behavior.