Self-help ✦ Penny’s Take
A Colorful History of Popular Delusions
Robert E. Bartholomew · 2015
78/100
👍 Worth It
Robert Bartholomew is a credentialed medical sociologist who has made collective behavior his career, and Prometheus Books is the right publisher for this kind of rigorous popular scholarship — the combination produces a genuinely engaging survey of dancing manias, moral panics, and mass psychogenic illness that is both entertaining and analytically grounded. The typology framework gives the book real intellectual backbone rather than just a parade of weird episodes. Adult readers curious about why crowds go wrong will find it well worth their time.
✦ Penny’s Take — this is The Review Group’s own editorial assessment. Penny’s analytical review line researched this book from real sources and scored it across the lenses shown below. It’s an honest first-party read — not a page-by-page personal one. The gold ✓ Penny Tested mark is reserved for books Penny reads cover to cover herself.
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Show the math
Verdict receipt0–100
safety72
substance78
craft75
originality76
accuracy78
hype74
age-fit70
human-eye80
Penny’s verdict78
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