In his discussion of the general psychological causes of revolution, LeBon draws detailed illustrations of fundamental points from the French Revolution, especially the period from 1789 to 1800. LeBon's treatment of psychological causes is not confined to crowd actions or to the immediate descriptions of violent episodes in revolutions. He draws upon contemporary French clinical psychology to describe the pathological characteristics of the revolutionary leadership in France and explains many of the events of the period as a consequence of their influence.

Gustave Le Bon (1841 -1931) was a French social psychologist, sociologist, anthropologist, inventor, and amateur physicist. He is best known for his 1895 work The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. His writings incorporate theories of national traits, racial and male superiority, herd behavior and crowd psychology.

This edition brings to you Le Bon's two most celebrated works, "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind" and "The Psychology of Revolution", which made a breakthrough in what is now known as crowd psychology. Le Bon theorised about a new entity, "psychological crowd", which emerges from incorporating the assembled population not only forms a new body but also creates a collective "unconsciousness". As a group of people gather together and coalesces to form a crowd, there is a "magnetic influence given out by the crowd" that transmutes every individual's behaviour until it becomes governed by the "group mind". Gustave Le Bon was a French polymath whose areas of interest included anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine, invention, and physics. Ignored or maligned by sections of the French academic and scientific establishment during his life due to his politically conservative and reactionary views, Le Bon was critical of democracy and socialism. Le Bon's works were influential to such disparate figures as Theodore Roosevelt and Benito Mussolini, Sigmund Freud and José Ortega y Gasset, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin.

First published in 1899 during a period of crisis for French democracy, The Psychology of Socialism details Le Bon's view of socialism and radicalism primarily as religious movements. The emotionalism and hysteria of the period-especially as manifested during the Dreyfuss Affair-convinced Le Bon that most political controversy is based neither on reasoned deliberation nor rational interest, but on a psychology that partakes of contatgion andhysteria. Le Bon points to the irrationality of religion and uses the religiosity of socialism to debunk socialism as an irrational movement based on hatred and jealousy.

Develops a social psychological approach to revolutions through analyzes of cases from around the world and during different historical periods.

What kind of people were in the crowds of revolutionary Paris? Rather than view the crowds as an abstraction as 'people' or 'mob', good or evil according to the writer's prejudice Rude uses a different approach. Through the use of police records and other contemporary sources Rude attempts to bring the important Parisian crowds of 1787-1795 to life .