The True Believer

By Eric Hoffer

Categories: Health, Fitness & Dieting

In the 1940s, Eric Hoffer was a dockworker in San Francisco who wrote philosophy in his spare time. The True Believer, his first and most famous book, became a bestseller after President Eisenhower cited it at one of the earliest televised press conferences. Hoffer looks into the mind of the fanatic: why people join mass movements, what those movements give them, and how an ordinary person becomes a true believer.

Recommended by 7 people

• Seth Godin
• Mark Manson
• Mark Cuban
• George Raveling
• Eric Weinstein
• Marc Andreessen: “10. The True Believer by Eric Hoffer -- a brilliant book on the nature of mass movements and collective psychology.”
• Shane Parrish: “A great primer for anyone wishing to understand mass movements, be they religious movements, social revolutions or nationalist movements. A sample”