The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
Eric Hoffer, 1951
HarperCollins
177 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060505912
Summary
This best-selling analysis of fanaticism and mass movements is an important addition to the field of sociology.
A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer—the first and most famous of his books—was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences. Completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today, The True Believer is a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one. (From the publisher.)