Hubris: The Road to Donald Trump

by David Owen

In Hubris: The Road to Donald Trump, David Owen analyses and describes the mental and physical condition of political leaders past and present with a particular view that what went before paved the way to President Trump. Of recent leaders there have been depressives, alcoholics, narcissists, populists and those affected by hubris syndrome and driven by their religious beliefs, as with Bush and Blair. But Donald Trump presents a completely different set of issues. This book is the first to place him in his historical, political, philosophical and medical context. It is appropriate that it should come from someone uniquely qualified to do so. A writer on Military Conversations of 1906–14, the War Cabinet in 1940 and UK foreign policy post Brexit, David Owen was British Foreign Secretary 1977–79 and EU peace negotiator in the Balkans 1992–95. As a former neuroscientist he has written extensively on hubris syndrome in journals like Brain and in 2008 in his classic book, In Sickness and In Power, still in print in a revised edition. This new book goes a long way to answer the question: is Trump persuadable? Bill Gates has an interesting reply in the Guardian. ‘Yes, one of the things you can say, plus or minus, is in very few areas does he have a fixed ideology. If there’s something where he feels he can look smart, particularly if it’s doing things in a different way than was done before, then yes, I think he’s open-minded.’

523 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 27, 2018

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen CH PC FRCP (born 2 July 1938) is a British politician. Owen served as British Foreign Secretary from 1977 to 1979, the youngest person in over forty years to hold the post. In 1981, Owen was one of the "Gang of Four" who left the Labour Party to found the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Owen led the SDP from 1983 to 1987, and the continuing SDP from 1988 to 1990. He sat in the House of Lords as a crossbencher until March 2014, and now sits as an "independent social democrat".

Reviews

[Vytas R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty strong analysis of the rise and rise of narcissism and populism in the US/UK/European politics. Owen (pardon, Lord Owen) is a political animal, but he is also a neuroscientist. So how did we end up with such a bunch of narcissists like BoJo, Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro, etc etc? Who were their predecessors? No quick’n’easy answers given, but really worthy effort to dissect this kooky agglomeration of strange characters we now have running the political show.