Author

Books by Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) was an American moral and social philosopher who spent most of his working life as a longshoreman on the San Francisco waterfront. Self-educated after a period of childhood blindness, he read voraciously and developed the aphoristic, essay-driven style that characterizes The True Believer and his subsequent books, including The Ordeal of Change and The Temper of Our Time. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983. His unusual biography — a manual laborer writing serious social philosophy — gave his work an authority and plainspokenness rare in academic writing on mass movements.