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Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Very insightful un-biased look into mass movements and the people who follow them. Very organized, easy reading. The author offers a number of thought-provoking explanations of the success and failure of political, religious and nationalist movements.
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Summary: great and very insightful book
Review: This little gem of a book should be required reading to all those who wonder why some people think the way they do as individual and in crowds. One would think that people would think according to the evidence. This book shows that people believe whatever they want, no matter what the evidence is. True believers are in every field, unfortunately even in supposedly objective fields such as in philosophy and science. Hoffer explains why people think the way they do and what makes a true believer. After reading this classic one should come away from it in understanding the way the world really works.
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Summary: Required reading
Review: One of the truly Great Books! If I taught a civics class, or basic government, or the History of the Holocaust, French Revolution or any era in which the populace of any nation was roused into action, good or ill, this is THE first book the students would read, discuss and understand prior to moving into the subject at hand.
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Summary: A masterful, modern and moral companion to "The Prince"
Review: Hoffer expands on Macchiavelli's pragmatic exploration of political power in terms of both nuance and moral responsibility. The result is a masterpiece which will change the way you view the world around you. Indeed, his examination of such cliched morality play fare such as the Nazis and the early Christians comes off as fresh and original.Like the other reviewers (and, in fact, Hoffer himself), I recommend that you read this with a critical eye, as its implications are elemental and Hoffer's later actions are less than confidence-inspiring. Nonetheless, I do recommend that you read it!
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Summary: political and social interpretations
Review: This is a truly great piece of philosophical writing. Hoffer's views on the nature of mass movements are startling. How could Christianity and Fascism be compared? He does so by examining the makeup of the believers. A must for any one who enjoys philosophical writing. A true masterpiece.
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Summary: A good book that should be read with a grain of salt
Review: This is a book with a lot of interesting ideas, but like anything else in the soft-sciences one should be a very doubtful and questioning reader. He mentions it himself several times in the book that he expects the reader to disagree with some of his points, and that some of his statements are purposefully extreme in order to start discussions. The reader should not accept everything he writes as the final truth by any means. The reader should be aware of the context the book was written in--the mid-50's during the red scare. So a lot of the material seems to support a status-quo government. An impression one might get from reading the book is that seemingly all mass movements are to be avoided, and that the frusterated masses are like "slime." Again one must carefully argue and question every point he makes. There is no doubt though that this book brings a lot of systemtic and insightful ideas that help explain a lot of what goes on in this world fifty years after he wrote it.
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Summary: Every federal agent should read this book!
Review: If this book had been required reading for all federal agents, the deaths at Waco would never have happened. It's the best book ever written on fanaticism.
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Summary: We ignore this at our peril
Review: A society in which this book is widely read would be a far safer place than a society trained in diversity classes. The biggest cure for group hatreds is general prosperity. If our current prosperity should end, we will need to understand this book to rationally work against mass movements. The most important chapter, for those who look down on participants in mass movements is the discussion on the care and feeding of intellectuals. Given that Sartre supported Stalin and Heidigger supported Hitler, we might want to be cautious about our own susceptibility to mass movements.
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Summary: Amazing
Review: This book has had a strong influence on me. Many of Hoffer's observations ring true when applied to real examples. His startling assertion that true believers are of the same basic psychological type, regardless of doctrine, has an uncanny explanatory power. Many later sociopolitical works echo his thoughts without acknowledging this man and his contributions.
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Summary: A brilliant book of this Century - should be a classic!
Review: A truly great book, easy to read and provides a provocative analysis of fanaticism - promoters and joiners of political and religious movements. I consider it one of the best of its type ever written - by a man with a keen ability to analyze human motivations and distill the essence of his findings in concise, often controversial, conclusions. You will be drawn to see how his observations mesh with your own experiences, upon careful reflection. Don't miss it!
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