Mr. Ronson is a fascinating journalist. He has somehow married an irrepressible interest in the bizarre and the fringe with a relentless will to pursue his stories to the bitter end. This blend of admirable doggedness with less-than-healthy obsession is what gave The Men Who Stare At Goats, his tremendously successful exploration of the U.S. Military's pursuit of the paranormal, its punch. But now he has turned to a far more serious topic, one that begins with a mystery and ends with a wary eye cast over its shoulder.
In The Psychopath Test, Mr. Ronson is sparked on a journey through psychopathy after he is asked by a female academic to investigate a strange case. She, along with several of her fellows, have been receiving an odd book from a mysterious author. Though Mr. Ronson quickly solves the mystery, its conclusion causes him to wonder about the role manipulative people play in society. What follows is a thorough and gripping account of his odyssey through the world of psychopaths, from the institutions that have attempted to treat them, to the men who have tried to profile them, to the hospitals that have hoped to restrain them. Between his fascinating interviews with possible psychopaths, he relates the history of these rare and strange humans while using a now famous checklist of psychopathic traits to spot them in his midst. But while this effort succeeds in entertaining and educating the reader on the state of psychopathy, it is Mr. Ronson's investigation of how psychopathy might affect our world that lends his tale a chill not easily shaken. From fuhrers to CEOs, Mr. Ronson pictures a world where the murderous and the inexplicable are made logical by imagining that psychopaths, more often than we might expect, occupy the seats of power.
Much of Mr. Ronson's work is marked by a characteristic over-anxiousness which causes the reader to wonder if he's allowed his imagination to take him a few steps too far, but he's a journalist, not a scholar. His job is to explore and examine, not to be soberly analytical. He wants his readers to join him in peeking over the edge of the abyss, to see what might be down there. In this, he is immensely successful. This is excellent gonzo journalism, moving, creepy and thought provoking. I might not sleep well tonight. (3/5 Stars)
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