This is a marvelous and disturbing book. Ostensibly, it is an accurate, chronological account of the main contributors to crowd psychology. But it is much more than an intellectual history chronicling theoreticians of mass society; it is a reminder about the extent to which we are all easily dominated by the techniques of mass manipulation.

In summarizing the contributions of Gustave LeBon, Gabriel de Tarde, and their "best disciple," Sigmund Freud, Moscovici argues that crowd psychology exists as a full-fledged discipline with an internal