Product Description

Considered one of the great books of the twentieth century Crowds and Power was the work responsible for winning Elias Canetti the 1981 Nobel Prize. From the destructive behaviour of soccer crowds to the horror of tyrannical rulers and from Bushmen and Pueblo Indian rain dances to the pilgrimage to Mecca, the author takes us on a fascinating journey through anthropology, psychology, biology, religion and literature. Ranging from the deeply profound to the overtly controversial - from the finger exercises of monkeys to the hallucinations of alcoholics - this book will change forever the way you look at groups of people and realise their awesome potential to be manipulated for good or for evil. He concludes that 'If we would master power we must face command openly and boldly, and search for means to deprive it of its sting'. This book will change forever the way you look at groups of people and the whole concept of power.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #640542 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-01
• Original language: German
• Binding: Paperback
• 495 pages

From the Publisher
Simon Schama explains why this is one of his favourites...
Born in Bulgaria and died in Hampstead, his first language the Hebrew-medieval Spanish hybrid, Ladino, Canetti was one of the most eccentric and extraordinary writers of the last century. His great novel, Auto-da-Fe will give anyone with a passion for books serious and prolonged nightmares.

Crowds and Power puts its finger unerringly on one of the great motor forces of modern history: the capacity of crowds to behave as more than the sum of their parts; to take on the characteristics of a collective organism, with a capacity to digest, multiply and kill. Himself a survivor of horrors (Canetti left Germany in 1938), his exacting eye takes in the grim retrospect of Europe but puts it in the context of tribal rituals in Africa, Amazonia and Australia.

Like most of the really great works of history, Canetti’s work, part ethnography, part social psychology, defies neat classification. But its message, not always welcome is - this too is what it’s like to be part of the human pack.

About the Author
Elias Canetti was born in Bulgaria in 1905 and moved to England when he was six. After his father's death he moved to Vienna, where in the chaos of the first days of the First World War he and his family were attacked by a crowd - thus his interest in crowds and power. He has won the Kafka prize, and in 1981 won the Nobel Prize for literature.

Customer Reviews

Great seller
The book arrived, ten days early, second hand as initially agreed. The pages are a little yellowed, but totally readable, and the binding is also in good nick(no pages falling out). The book was well wrapped for the postage, in cardboard and tape, before being placed in an envelope. The seller included a full set of contact details, were anything not in order. I would be happy to deal with this seller again as everything arrived as agreed, or better, at the time of purchase.