According to the cover, Mike Dash's Tulipomania is "A marvelous parable of greed, skullduggery, opulence, extravagance, and retribution." I'm not sure I'd go quite that far.
So why was I even reading a book about the seventeenth century Dutch tulip bubble? I read about the bubble in Waves of Prosperity and was sufficiently intrigued. Dash has certainly been thorough in his research, both of the history of the tulip as well as Netherlands history and particularly of the economic conditions in seventeenth century Europe. I actually found the most intriguing part of the book to be the discussion of the mores of the Ottoman Empire; Dash's commentary is a great complement to that of Edmond Taylor in The Fall of the Dynasties.
The deficiencies, then, aren't inherent to Dash's research or writing. The bigger challenge is that I often felt there just wasn't quite enough for this to really be an entire book. Dash himself acknowledges regularly the extent to which events are unknown - and unknowable.
Perhaps if I had a greater interest in botany, if I didn't have to mentally rack my brain for an image of the various parts of a flower, and if I didn't harbor a secret horror of trying to keep a flower alive, let alone paying years' wages for a single bulb, well I might have enjoyed Tulipomania just a tad more. As it stands, I'm inclined to feel what I read of the bubble in Waves of Prosperity was sufficient, and imagine most readers would agree with me.
Two stars.
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