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Hands down, the most useful non-technical book I’ve read is The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. Written in 1951, but utterly timeless, it unlocks a new way to vie
by nihonde 7y ago
Hands down, the most useful non-technical book I’ve read is The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. Written in 1951, but utterly timeless, it unlocks a new way to view your fellow man by revealing the impulses that lead someone toward fanatical mass movements. In a funny way, it frees you from participating in the pointless debates about ideologies and allows you to be more empathetic to those who have fallen into the trap of mass movements. Beautifully written, too, without even a hint of academic pretensions.
- d_burfoot 7y agoThanks for the recommendation. I liked the author's biography: > Eric Hoffer (1902 -- 1983) was self-educated. He worked in restaurants, as a migrant fieldworker, and as a gold prospector. After Pearl Harbor, he worked as a longshoreman in San Francisco for twenty-five years. The author of more than ten books, including The Passionate State of Mind, The Ordeal of Change, and The Temper of Our Time, Eric Hoffer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983.