The Crowd - A Study of the Popular Mind

By: Gustave Le Bon

Narrated by: John Clickman

In The Crowd - A Study of the Popular Mind, social theorist Gustave Le Bon gives historical insight into the political thinking of his era while offering timeless social commentary. Le Bon challenges the listener to contemplate how individual ideas change - often to a destructive end - when employed in a setting of groupthink. As technology and communications innovations make group formation easy and accessible for better or for worse, this book's message is certainly one that will not be lost in the crowd.

©2019 BN Publishing (P)2019 BN Publishing

Exhausting

I couldn't finish the first chapter. The author takes simple knowledge concerning how someone would behave in a crowd and overcomplicates it.

Crazy boring and full of words. Would not recommend.

excellent book

this was an excellent book from start to finish was genuinely surprised when I found that it was finished, the narrator was amazing and kept such a great pace.

Run away from the Sheep 🐑

This is a very good book on crowd psychology. Well in depth. It will make you look at life differently than a sheep 🐑

A terrible narrator

John Clickman is tone deaf, mispronounces words frequently, and is tentative in pronouncing names and other words. This Audible is almost a waste. I used it as accompaniment to reading the book. I can’t imagine how clear and useful to those using Audible alone. I cringed during most of it, like drinking a bad tasting medicine. But this is an illuminating book, dated but relevant as to the function of crowds.

bad translation and narrator, mostlymediocre ideas

There is at least one mistranslation per minute, and the narration is...regrettable. French words as common as "monsieur" are grossly mispronounced, and "had they known" is read as a question. "pendant cinquant ans" is clunkily translated as "during 50 years", and "avec sangfroid" is translated as "in cold blood" in a place where it clearly means "with a cool head". There are a few interesting ideas, but they are often couched in terms of now-discredited paradigms like animal magnetism, mesmerism, and race theory. Le Bon has the whiff of a disappointed ex-idealist who has become bitter, butthurt, and petulant.
There are, however, a few flashes of genuine insight, and a largely self-consistent if cynical view of human collective action.

Narrator is pronouncing words not understanding

This is the worst audio book I've listened to. The book uses somewhat arcane 19th century language that has been translated to English, and the narrator seems as though he is struggling to get the pronunciation of unfamiliar verbiage right, but in so doing he puts the emphasis on words that aren't important in the sentence. I gave the Story 3 stars, but it might be higher or lower if the narrator weren't so bad that I had a very hard time understanding what he was talking about. If the same sentences were spoken with emphasis where it would make sense I'd be able to follow easily, but I found myself pausing and going back to see how he was incorrectly enunciating, and that was so distracting that the actual meaning of the sentences was lost.