In 1636 and 1637, the people of the Netherlands peaked in their obsessive fascination with the tulip, that quintessentially most stately and refined of all flowers, whose bulb had been first introduced to the country from the Ottoman Empire during the previous century. Tulip Mania, which entailed tulip-crazed people bidding on fantasy strains of the flower that had yet to even be planted in Dutch soil, induced these hard-working, luxury-loving, status-seeking Europeans to mortgage their very homes in some cases: all for the love of a tulip bulb...