The Books canon

Sourced and shelved.

Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
2 volumes
SortEditorial Year Title
Genre·Social psychology✕clear
Nonfiction · Psychology

The True Believer

Eric Hoffer
1951 · 177 pages

Mass movements are interchangeable, Hoffer argues: converts join not from conviction but to be rid of themselves. Eisenhower handed the book around, and every new wave of fanaticism sends Americans back to it.

★ 6.3
Nonfiction · Psychology

Crowds and Power

Elias Canetti
1960 · 495 pages

Canetti anatomizes the crowd as a natural force, then locates power in the survivor who stands alive among the dead. Every command, he argues, leaves a sting in whoever obeys it.

★ 6.5