Rating: 
Summary: Olson needs to depart from ivory tower and visit real world
Review: Probably one of the worst written books on economic theory that has been written.Author hasn't visited corporate America to understand how groups small and large function. Lacks understanding of politics. Farmers used as examples in book (1971) unfortunately don't exist today. He had opportunity to update and revise his thinking by making substanital revisions. He didn't. Borrow the book from the library, read it if you like, but don't buy it!
Rating: 
Summary: Somewhat dated, but still worth reading
Review: This book does a good job of describing the effects of financial incentives on the ability of large and small groups to organize to promote their interests. But it doesn't try to analyze the effects of non-financial incentives such as the desire for a reputation for altruism.
One of the most striking features of this book is the worldview that it criticizes. Apparently when the book was written, it was respectable to believe that special interest group politics improved democracy. This book seems to have been one of the original reasons for the shift of opinions away from that view. But from today's perspective, Olson seems a bit naive in his optimism that large governments and labor unions will serve the public interest in spite of the problems that the book describes of small interest groups with concentrated interests being more effective at lobbying than large groups with diluted interests.
His clear reasoning on his main points is still not as widely understood as it should be. But the other two books of his that I've read are better (The Rise and Decline of Nations, and Power and Prosperity).
Rating: 
Summary: Old, but valuable, or at least very interesting
Review: This book is based on Olson's Ph.D. dissertation in 1963 at Economics Department of Harvard entitled 'A General Theory of Public Goods.' So, this is the book written 40 years ago, but I think still valuable, or at least very interesting.
You can learn what public good is and why it is not provided (or provided only by government). But textbooks do not explain what the difference is between small and large groups in terms of provision of public goods. This book explains it in a way that is understandable to people with minimal knowledge on economics.
If you are interested in questions like: Why do many people write a book review for Amazon.com without any monetary compensation?; Why do many people contribute to development of free software?; or Why DO your roommates clean a shared living room (= public goods)?; this book is worth your time and money.
Olson wrote an article entitled 'An Economic Theory of Alliances' with Richard Zeckhauser in 1966. If you would like to know only his theory and are not interested at all in how he applied it to many examples, I think this article is enough for your purpose.
Economist Todd Sandler wrote a book titled 'Collective Action: Theory and Applications' in 1992. Mancur Olson wrote a forward to this book, saying that the book is very well written on the same topic of 'Logic of Collective Action.' So if you are interested in recent development in this area, it would be time-efficient to read this Sandler's book.
Rating:
Summary: A different point of view on the association-making theory
Review: This is not the first Mancur Olson's book i have read (the other was an spanish translation of "The Rise and Fall .."). Mancur Olson seems to have the idea that economics provides concepts and methods to explain most of the social phenomena and social institutions. Like Gary Becker, he faces the risks that arise when an specific core of concepts developed to explain some specific social problems, about markets and firms for instance, are applied to other topics. The result is a new approach to the explanation of association-making problem that provides, too, more concepts for empirical research. Sociologists and other social scientists should not feel this kind of proposals as an "invasion". Economics is a social science too, an some developments from other social sciences could become part of this one (against the fans for, only, mathematics and econometrics). The cases studied at the second part of the book - taken from the american history - suggest that his theory (explained in the first part), what is a subtle derivation taken from the neoclassical economics, could have an empirical proof. The followers of theses ideas are expecting other scholars could contribute with a complete empirical study, based on this theory. I belong to this group. By the way, i will look for these studies in Amazon.com.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic Book of Right-Wing Collective Behavior
Review: Well, I'm a graduate school student in Taiwan. My major is labor studies. Olson provide a insightful thought about collective behavior. If you'd like to figure out what the Right thought about groups, read this book!
Rating:
Summary: Good in theory, lacking proof
Review: While this is an excellent book on group theory, it lacks sufficient empirical evidence supporting the conclusions the author comes to. Comes to astoundingly simple conclusions through the weirdest contortions...
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