First things, last things (A Cass Canfield book)

Dust jacket notes: "Ever since The True Believer, Eric Hoffer has been saying what he thinks without caring whether other people think he ought to think that way. In this sustained attack on the errors of our ways as he sees them - a consistently developed argument in nine chapters - he challenges the current romantic reverence for nature, the tendency to capitulate to the violence of the young and the militant ethnic minorities, the downgrading of the common man, his needs and his achievements, and the corresponding tendency to belittle the character and accomplishments of our nation. Mr. Hoffer's view of our present chaos as a consequence of rapid change is in tune with his view of the past, in which revolution appears as the by-product of change, rather than the other way around. And he warns against the threat to freedom - the desire to master and manipulate other human beings - which he considers implicit in the elitist vision of the intellectuals. These controversial ideas, and the conclusions Hoffer draws from them, are presented with the pungency that has made him one of the most widely read critics of our contemporary life."