Lee

Orcs used to be a fearsome fighting force, and the unleashing of the Horde brought terror to humans, elves, and dwarves time and time again over the centuries. Nowadays, there aren't any more Ultimate Evils, necromancers, or dark wizards left to hire the Horde. Paug Blumpkin is smart for an orc (rather like saying he's smart for a box of hair). He's bored of training with the rest of the Horde for a war that will never come, and he's definitely tired of polishing his helmet. So he decides to set off in search of adventure, bringing along his cheerfully idiotic brother Milph, who has a regular habit of forgetting his pants.

Why do otherwise intelligent individuals form seething masses of idiocy when they engage in collective action? We may think that the Great Crash of 1929, junk bonds of the '80s, and over-valued high-tech stocks of the '90s are peculiarly 20th century aberrations, but Mackay's classic - first published in 1841 - shows that the madness and confusion of crowds knows no limits, and has no temporal bounds.