Crowds and Power

What is power, and what is the crowd? How do the two relate to each other? Crowds and Power is a striking and unclassifiable study of how human beings behave in groups and how collective forces shape history. Rejecting conventional sociology, 1981 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Elias Canetti creates a unique framework that draws on anthropology, mythology, psychology, history, psychoanalysis and literature to explain why crowds form, how they act and what makes them so powerful. Drawing on his experiences in Vienna in the 1930s and a range of material spanning centuries and every continent, Canetti offers insights into the psychology of the crowd, the variety of religious experience, the paranoia of rulers and the pathology of power. A visionary and provocative book, Crowds and Power is a major work illuminating the forces driving mass movements and offers one of the most profound and startling portraits of the human condition ever written.