"Many modern economists hold that speculation is a benign economic activity, that it is always rational in motivation and rarely adverse in its effects. The struggles of the United States after the Crash of 1929 and of Japan in the 1990s suggest otherwise. Some commentators, the billionaire financier George Soros among them, believe that growing speculative forces threaten a global financial crisis. "--BOOK JACKET. "Devil Take the Hindmost is an original and challenging history of stock-market speculation from the seventeenth century to the present day. Through vivid accounts of the speculative activities (wise and unwise) of investors ranging from Daniel Defoe and Benjamin Disraeli to Ivan Boesky and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Edward Chancellor shows that speculation is not driven solely by the desire to make money - by fear and greed - but springs from a wider range of human compulsions and aspirations. "--BOOK JACKET.