Corruptible

Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us

By: Dr Brian Klaas

Narrated by: Dr Brian Klaas

Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

Does power corrupt, or are corrupt people drawn to power? Are entrepreneurs who embezzle and cops who kill the outgrowths of bad systems, or are they just bad people? Are tyrants made or born? If you were thrust into a position of power, would new temptations to line your pockets or torture your enemies gnaw away at you until you gave in?

To answer these questions, Corruptible draws on more than 500 interviews with some of the world's noblest and dirtiest leaders, from presidents and philanthropists to rebels, cultists and dictators. It also makes use of a wealth of counter-intuitive examples from history and social science: you'll meet the worst bioterrorist in American history, hit the slopes with a ski instructor who once ruled Iraq, have breakfast with the yogurt kingpin of Madagascar, learn what bees and wasps can teach us about corruption, find out why our Stone Age brains cause us to choose bad leaders and learn why the inability of chimpanzees to play baseball is central to the development of human hierarchies.

Corruptible will make you challenge basic assumptions about how you can rise to become a leader and what might happen to your head when you get there. It also provides a road map to avoiding classic temptations, suggesting a series of reforms that would ensure that better people get into power, while ensuring that power purifies rather than corrupts.

©2021 Brian Klaas (P)2021 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Critic reviews

"Illuminating." (Adam Grant, best-selling author of Think Again)

"Passionate, insightful, and occasionally jaw-dropping." (Peter Frankopan, best-selling author of The Silk Roads)

Soggy and detracting from reality

Filled with far to many soggy and fickle leftist ideologies.

This work is watery, it lacks a true perspective on the brutality of nature and life.