When it happens, it feels like winning the lottery. An email arrives out of the blue, from one of my publishers or a festival director or a member...
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Taylor Thorne, August 4, 2012 (view all comments by Taylor Thorne)
Perfectly pitched humor about the wacky world of psychiatry. Are you a psychopath? I don't know, but you'd be crazy to not read this laugh out loud book.
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Thomas Kirby, July 23, 2012 (view all comments by Thomas Kirby)
An interesting book, with the author alternately questioning the validity and/or accuracy of the sciences of psychiatry and psychology, the sanity of our government and corporate leaders, centering on the subject of this book, the Hare Checklist. He gives us plenty of questions, but leaves the reader unsure as to his ultimate conclusions. Then again, maybe it's better that we think for ourselves. One interesting section tells the story of a man in England who, when charged with a particularly malicious assault, decides to fake insanity thinking he would end up in a comfortable local facility. Ending up in Broadmoor (where the Moors Murderers were imprisoned), he then tries to convince the doctors that he is sane, easier said than done.
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"Review"
by The Boston Globe,
"Because of Ronson's relentless self-deprecation and goofy, British humor, it's easy to tag along without fully realizing the rigor of his reporting, which is itself frenzied with compulsive questioning and obsessive research."
"Review"
by San Francisco Chronicle,
"A rollicking, page-turner of a book...no ordinary piece of investigative journalism....Ronson's storytelling skills are strong enough to enliven even the necessary reflections that would be one yawn after another if entrusted to a lesser writer."
"Review"
by Los Angeles Times,
"A book that manages to be as cheerily kooky as it is well-researched."
"Review"
by New York Times,
"Engagingly irreverent."
"Review"
by Washington Post Book World,
"[A] fascinating and humane book."
"Review"
by O, The Oprah Magazine,
"Both terrifying and hilarious."
"Synopsis"
by Ingram,
In this madcap journey, a bestselling journalist investigates psychopaths and the industry of doctors, scientists, and everyone else who studies them.
The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he's sane and certainly not a psychopath.
Ronson not only solves the mystery of the hoax but also discovers, disturbingly, that sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.
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