Book Review: Corruptible

Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us by Brian Klaas

A friend of mine recommended this author to me based on a video interview Brian Klaas did on YouTube, so I bought the book based on that. It’s about systems of leadership: how we choose leaders, who seeks power, and what happens to people once they get it.

I enjoyed this book because it hit that sweet spot that the best of pop science tries to hit (but sometimes overreaches) between being comprehensible and relevant without playing too fast and loose with conclusions. For example, Klaas admits when the methodology is flawed when citing studies that all pretty universally have grad student volunteers as subjects. Yet, he has chapter headings that offer intriguing tidbits such as “why chimpanzees can’t play baseball” and then later on explains how that’s relevant to leadership and societal structures.

This isn’t a how-to book. It’s sometimes satisfying to want a “okay, but how does this change how I live my life?” conclusion after reading this–you’re not gonna get one. He offers a few suggestions for things that might work to improve our society, like an independent research council made of random people to provide a valid counterpoint to political decisions, but no real agenda to make that happen. He also doesn’t seem to reference his own original studies, instead relying on the body of work available to him. It is pop science, after all. It’s not groundbreaking new findings, it’s something to make you sound smarter at cocktail parties. Worth a read (or listen).




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