Sunday, August 7, 2011

Just Finished: The Psychopath Test

In The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry Jon Ronson haphazardly examines psychopaths and the "madness industry" begins when he is asked to dig up information about a mysterious book sent anonymously to a variety of people around the world. In the process of solving that mystery, Ronson gets interested in psychopaths and how they are classified as such. From there he begins interviewing everyone from Bob Hare, whose psychopath checklist is used in prisons and mental institutions across the globe, to actual sociopaths and even a CEO.

As Ronson collects his information, he also does some self-examination (he's not a psychopath) and evaluates the sociopathic tendencies of the media and the explosion of mental classifications on the Western world that have given everyone a disorder.

Overall the book was fascinating, funny, and disturbing. My biggest critique was that Ronson jumped from subject to subject without clear paths linking A to B to C at times-an issue I find in many nonfiction books.

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