Dimensions
143 x 203 x 12mm
A highly provocative, bestselling analysis of the fanatic - the individual compelled to join a cause, any cause - and a penetrating study of mass movements from early Christianity to modern nationalism and Communism.
Reporting on the true believer, Eric Hoffer examines with Machiavellian detachment mass movements, from Christianity in its infancy to the national uprisings of our own day. His analysis of the psychology of mass movements is a brilliant and frightening study of the mind of the fanatic, the individual whose, personal failings lead him to join a cause, any cause, even at peril to life - or yours.
Eric Hoffer was a stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s who wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. 'The True Believer' was the first and most famous of his books, made into a bestseller when then President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences.
Hoffer appeared on Public Television in 1964 and then in two one-hour conversations on CBS with Eric Severeid, which propelled him into the role of public philosopher in the mode of Joseph Campbell.
