The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character.

RIESMAN, David with Reuel Denney and Nathan Glazer.

Item Number: 55080

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950.

First edition of this landmark work. Octavo, original cloth. Signed by David Riesman on the title page. Near fine in a very good dust jacket. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Scarce and desirable signed by Riesman and in the original dust jacket.

The Lonely Crowd is considered by many to be the most influential book of the twentieth century. Its now-classic analysis of the 'new middle class' in terms of inner-directed and other-directed social character opened exciting new dimensions in our understanding of the psychological, political, and economic problems that confront the individual in contemporary American society. "[T]he best-selling book by a professional sociologist in American history . . . [with] the widest influence on the nation at large" (Orlando Patterson, New York Times).