Costin Nitsoc's Reviews > The Crowd: Study of the Popular Mind

Firstly, it's incredible that this book was written some 120 years ago as it still makes perfect sense today and in a very ironic way, it describes perfectly what happened during the 20th century.

Without being an academic paper as it contains only Gustave Le Bon's suppositions, the book describes pretty accurately the crowd mentality and behavior.
In short, the crowds are just like one's unconscious, it is irrational, rather emotional, and with a primeval attitude. This was damn well demonstrated throughout the last 100 years and it's perfectly pictured on today's social media.

What I didn't get is why the overall arrogant tone on which Le Bon writes and who are those who he calls "manipulators of the crowds", after all, we are all subject to the same patterns of behavior, no matter if we're talking about a parliamentary crowd, protesters on the streets or an academia meet. The same monkey behavior that rends us vulnerable and creates perfect social storms.