William Quinn is a Lecturer in Finance at Queen's University Belfast, where he conducts research on market manipulation, stock markets and, above all, bubbles. John D. Turner is a Professor of Finance and Financial History at Queen's University Belfast. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and an editor of The Economic History Review. His book Banking in Crisis (2014) won the Wadsworth Prize in 2015.

'Where do financial bubbles come from? Can – and should – policy makers always try to stop them? Can investors avoid them? Quinn and Turner take us on an informative, engaging tour of the last three hundred years of bubbles and, using history as their guide, provide intriguing answers.' Richard S. Grossman, author of WRONG: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn from Them.

• List of figures; List of tables; 1. The bubble triangle; 2. 1720 and the invention of the bubble; 3. Marketability revived: the first emerging market bubble; 4. Democratising speculation: the great railway mania; 5. Other people's money: the Australian land boom; 6. Wheeler-dealers: the British bicycle mania; 7. The roaring twenties and the Wall Street Crash; 8. Blowing bubbles for political purposes: Japan in the 1980s; 9. The dot-com bubble; 10. 'No more boom and bust': the subprime bubble; 11. Casino capitalism with Chinese characteristics; 12. Predicting bubbles; Acknowledgements; Endnotes; Bibliography; Index.

William Quinn is a Lecturer in Finance at Queen's University Belfast, where he conducts research on market manipulation, stock markets and, above all, bubbles. John D. Turner is a Professor of Finance and Financial History at Queen's University Belfast. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and an editor of The Economic History Review. His book Banking in Crisis (2014) won the Wadsworth Prize in 2015.

'Where do financial bubbles come from? Can – and should – policy makers always try to stop them? Can investors avoid them? Quinn and Turner take us on an informative, engaging tour of the last three hundred years of bubbles and, using history as their guide, provide intriguing answers.' Richard S. Grossman, author of WRONG: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn from Them.

• List of figures; List of tables; 1. The bubble triangle; 2. 1720 and the invention of the bubble; 3. Marketability revived: the first emerging market bubble; 4. Democratising speculation: the great railway mania; 5. Other people's money: the Australian land boom; 6. Wheeler-dealers: the British bicycle mania; 7. The roaring twenties and the Wall Street Crash; 8. Blowing bubbles for political purposes: Japan in the 1980s; 9. The dot-com bubble; 10. 'No more boom and bust': the subprime bubble; 11. Casino capitalism with Chinese characteristics; 12. Predicting bubbles; Acknowledgements; Endnotes; Bibliography; Index.