/lit/ - Literature

>>12754212
She cannot descend any lower

>>12058213
>>12058222

and i have seen things men only believe they've seen

>>12004236

sooooo it depends on what you want. Le Bon is primarily important at this point for historical reasons in the development of crowd theory; "The Crowd" is an important book mainly in that it is THE source of the popularization of the current, fear-based image of the uncontrollable rabble-crowd--virtually everything Le Bon said was said beforehand, by figures like Rude, Tarde, Sighele, etc., but it was Le Bon who essentially brought these theories to the masses via a watered down, popular and fairly one-dimensional psychological reading of crowd formation.

i would highly, highly recommend McClelland's "The Crowd and Mob: From Plato to Canetti"; Barrows' "Distorting Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late Nineteenth Century France"; and Nye's "The Origins of Crowd Psychology: Gutave Le Bon and the Crisis of Mass Democracy"

>>11945292