Crowds and Power

Crowds and Power is a revolutionary work in which Elias Canetti finds a new way of looking at human history and psychology. Breathtaking in its range and erudition, it explores Shiite festivals and the English Civil war, the finger exercises of monkeys and the effects of inflation in Weimar Germany. In this study of the interplay of crowds, Canetti offers one of the most profound and startling portraits of the human condition.

Praise

"Canetti is one of our great imaginers and solitary men of genius."—Iris Mudoch

"Canetti dissolves politics into pathology, treating society as a mental activity--a barbaric one, of course—that must be decoded."—Susan Sontag

About the Author(s)

Elias Canetti

Elias Canetti was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981. He mastered many genres, writing several plays and memoirs, a novel, and a work of social theory. He died in 1994.