THE LATEST CRAZE
My first book, The Latest Craze: A Short History of Mass Hysterias (Fall River Press/Sterling, 2011) is now available at Barnes & Noble stores around the country and at www.BN.com.
The Latest Craze is an educational but fun-to-read history of bubbles, fads, hysterias and trends, featuring sixty-three crazes in seven categories:
1. Financial Panics, Bubbles and Crashes. (From the tulip bubble of 1630s Holland to the housing bubble of 2000s America)
2. Mass Hysterias. (Oft-unexplained phenomena, including a dancing plague, a laughter epidemic, and a mysterious monkey man)
3. Moral Panics. (Spanning witch hunts and fears of the occult to attempts to censor literature and blame suicide on musicians)
4. Fashion Fads. (Best-forgotten hairstyles and clothing styles)
5. Cultural Manias. (The fads that impacted pop culture, be they hit albums, must-have toys, trendy diets or book series)
6. Technological Trends and Fears. (From the real Luddites of Britain to the neo-Luddites of today)
7. Beyond-Our-Control Panics. (Fears about alien life, catastrophic disasters, and even the end of the world)
From the Publisher: “Each entry offers a description of the conditions that caused the situation, examples of extreme behavior, the peak of the hysteria, and the consequences (immediate and ultimate). Will we ever learn? Probably not, but it’s as entertaining as it is enlightening to see how the parade of absurdity continues to play out.”