The ordeal of change (Perennial library)

by Eric Hoffer

Book Overview

Eric Hoffer--one of America's most important thinkers and the author of The True Believer--lived for years as a Depression Era migratory worker. Self-taught, his appetite for knowledge--history,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0007DFASW
• Release Date: January 1967
• Publisher: Harper & Row
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Buy all the E. Hoffer you can

Every book a jewel. No matter how many times I return to a Hoffer book, there's always something valuable and new.

Ordeal of Change

Although Eric Hoffer wrote in the sixties, his observations have remained timeless and spot on for truth. I highly recommend this short, terse book for anyone. His other books are equally fasinating and provide great insights. That Eric Hoffer was a longshoreman who writes well and profoundly is another added benefit for all those who suffer under the delusion that wisdom comes only from an ivory tower. I made this purchase now only because all my copies of Hoffer had been aged, torn, coffee stained and suffered from years in a back pocket and needed replacement. You can take the forty years of reading I have gotten as sufficient testimony as to its worth.

Brilliant essays

Hoffer's essays are the best I have ever read on sociology. They are short, well organized and provide the deepest understanding of human nature. I hardly remember a thinker which could compete with Hoffer in this field.

He walked to the sound of his own drummer

This work contains a mixture of autobiography and philosophical and social reflection. Hoffer wrote ," My writing grows out of my life, just like a branch out of a tree" And his lifelong journey in learning was really integral to his own life. He began reading Montaigne and spent a lifetime reading more and learning all the time. He makes it clear here that he like most human beings fears change, but understands that to truly thrive from change one must learn, understood that those who rely on what they have learned long ago will have the world pass them. In other words he recommended that Societies like individuals be engaged in a continual process of learning and developing. Hoffer was a one- of - a kind original. A truly decent person, who walked to the sound of his own drummer. Admirable in his anti- totalitarian stance and his refusal to be cowed by intellectual trend or fashion. He was a believer in American freedom , and an example of what a free - society can produce- at its best.

Down-to-earth philosophy and insight into change

Eric Hoffer is a remarkable individual, a self-educated philosopher and original thinker. He made an incredible impact years ago with his first book, The True Believer, which became a cult classic. A generation later, it has been (temporarily) forgotten, along with his second book, which never received the recognition it deserved. The Ordeal of Change relates how human beings deal with change in a series of essays that are both easy to relate to, meaningful to academics and lay people alike, and reflective of scholarship and common-sense. Why are we both attracted to and afraid of change? Hoffer's very readable book answers these questions in understandable and well-grounded terms. I have recommended this book to a dozen executives who have had to deal with resistance to change in their organizations, and somehow never came across this remarkable work by a San Francisco longshoreman who is a rival as a thinker to the best of more recognized intellectuals. Surprise someone whose mind you admire and wish to challenge with this as a gift, and do yourself a favor, proving that you can compete in the world of ideas. I didn't get my copy back from the last person I loaned it to, and can't remember who it was, so I have to buy a second copy of one of my all time favorites.