thoughts on the nature of mass movements

Hoffer sets out for himself no smaller a task than the identification of “peculiarities common to all mass movements, be they religious movements, social revolutions or nationalist movements. The True Believer is an unusual book, by turns quite perceptive and quite reductive. The crowning achievement of his writing career was his reception of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983, roughly three months before his death at the age of eighty.Įric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1951) He also taught as an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley for a time. It was during this period of his life that he started writing in earnest, including the book under consideration here, which brought him a significant measure of renown and led to numerous other works.

Hoffer made ends meet for a while by working odd jobs, including finding employment as a migrant farm laborer, and spent much of his free time reading.Įventually, Hoffer settled into a position as a longshoreman in San Francisco, a job which he held down for roughly two decades. Some of the details of Hoffer’s early life have been the subject of considerable debate, but the gist of the story is that Hoffer had a hardscrabble upbringing full of family tragedy (the death of both parents) and health concerns (his vision disappeared for a number of years before mysteriously returning). This time around, the book of the month was the quite different–in many ways– The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer.īefore getting into the book, I should provide some context on Hoffer himself, as any evaluation of his work needs to take into consideration his unusual life story and path to authorship and fame.

Welcome back for round two of my “bonus book reviews” extra content here at the blog! Last month, I offered a few comments on Camilla Townsend’s excellent Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs, which I read as part of an academic nonfiction book discussion group (AKA, an online book club).

Thoughts on the nature of mass movements