This book is a highly provocative analysis of the political/religious fanatic 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 his life or yours.
"Hoffer has outlined remarkably clear and suggestive theory about the kind of social change he sums up as "mass movements", supplied concrete illustrative materials drawn from a wide historical range, and put them together in a brief, readable, and provocative book." - New York Herald Tribune
