INSIDE THE BUBBLE
Published in the June 13, 2026 issue.
Devil Take the Hindmost
Edward Chancellor
MacMillan
448 p.
“The four most expensive words in the English language are ‘this time it’s different,’” Edward Chancellor attributes to Sir John Templeton in his expansive and engrossing Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation.
This book fundamentally changed the way I see the world.
Devil Take the Hindmost is densely detailed, beginning with the Roman financial system and ending in 1999, when the text was published. Chancellor defines speculation as “to reflect or theorize without a firm factual basis.” A financial speculator, he continues, “resembles the alchemist in that he is constantly constructing abstruse theories to turn paper into gold, normally with little success.”
In other words, a financial bubble. Chancellor spends the next 349 pages addressing how speculation—alchemy, financial bubbles, call it what you want—is created and the panic generated when it falls apart.
My favorite excerpt of his centered on “Tulipomania,” in which, during the 1630s, the Dutch economy became hyper-fixated on the tulip. The flowers proved the perfect object for speculation. Tulips were easy to cultivate and required little land. The craze reached across classes: the wealthy began to collect rare bulbs, and the poor, who couldn’t afford to purchase land, could instead wager on a bulb. As interest in the tulips grew, so did the volume of the flowers grown and the arrangements traded.
But as the market exploded, extending into Paris and northern France, the wealthy bulb collectors lost interest, withdrawing their large financial contributions from the market.
“Tulips remained merely an expression of wealth, not a means to that end,” Chancellor writes.
Hence, the tulip market lost its stability.
On February 3, 1637, the market suddenly crashed. Chancellor attributes the tulip crumble to the rapid approach of spring. Rumors spread that there were no more buyers, and the next day, tulips could not be sold at any price.
As the book unfolds, Chancellor continues to ravenously walk through anecdote after anecdote of financial alchemy and collapse. What stuck out to me was that he wrote this text before the 2008 recession. While I was initially skeptical of the legitimacy of Chancellor’s text due to its age, I rapidly realized his careful reporting perfectly illuminated the ways in which the 2000s financial crisis occurred. The housing bubble was bound to burst.
After I put the book down, I thought of the speculation I notice in my daily life. Data centers, for one. In my home state of Utah, business shark Kevin O’Leary had a 40,000 acre data center approved on drought-stricken land. The project has since been scaled back to 10,000 acres after significant public backlash. I am horrified.
The environmental impacts of data centers are disturbing, but after reading Chancellor’s book, I couldn’t stop thinking about the future of AI. Why build these resource suckers if there’s no telling what will become of the technology they produce? Greed, financial optimism, and speculation. I can’t say when the bubble will burst, but my fingers are crossed.
Another bubble also came to mind: tourism in the Eastern Sierra. Mammoth Lakes Tourism (MLT) and the Town of Mammoth Lakes (TOML) speculate relentlessly on the volume of tourists and the money these individuals will spend.
The Eastern Sierra is a tourism-based economy, and without this “alchemy,” the area would have no ability to build infrastructure or implement Transit Occupancy Tax (TOT)-driven amenities. Without a little guesswork, building the $16.82 million Dave and Roma McCoy Arts and Cultural Center (MACC) would not be possible. Say goodbye to the indoor ice rink, the rec center, and Margarita Fest.
Tourism, like all speculation, is volatile. There’s no telling if, or when, tourists will stop swarming to the Eastside. Climate change certainly won’t help. Would another winter like the one we had this year be enough to push the town over the edge? I am no financial expert, but using my Chancellor informed brain, I’ll say increasing TOT certainly won’t make the town’s tourism speculation more stable. This time, it won’t be different.
Chancellor’s Devil Take the Hindmost isn’t an easy read. Each page is dense, a bombardment of information. But these details are worth it. Whether you’re looking to expand your mind and look critically at financial bubbles through a historical lens, or if you’re like me and had no understanding of speculation before, this book is for you.
