The Hubris Syndrome

The Hubris Syndrome PDF Author: David Owen
Publisher: Methuen Publishing
ISBN: 9780413777270
Category : Gran Bretanya
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
For some politicians and business leaders, power can become an intoxicating drug, and can affect their actions and decision-making in a most serious way. The ancient Greeks called it hubris, and identified arrogance and contempt for others' opinions as classic traits. They also took comfort in the knowledge that the Gods would punish the guilty ones--nemesis. In this revised edition, David Owen has drawn on new material he has written in Brain and other medical journals. He has also drawn on published memoirs of the main players in the Iraq War and on evidence given to the Iraq Inquiry. All this reinforces his earlier assertion that George W. Bush and Tony Blair developed hubris syndrome during their terms in office. From their behavior, beliefs, and governing style, Owen has analyzed the two leaders, with particular reference to the Iraq War, to show that their handling of the war was a litany of hubristic incompetence. During Blair's premiership, David Owen had several meetings and conversations with him that afforded a unique insight into his modus operandi. In this book, Owen presents a devastating critique of how Blair and Bush manipulated intelligence, ignored informed advice, and failed to plan for the aftermath of regime change in Iraq. Their messianic manner, excessive confidence, and belief that they would be vindicated by a "higher court," brought chaos to Iraq and resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties.

The Hubris Syndrome

The Hubris Syndrome PDF Author: David Owen
Publisher: Methuen Publishing
ISBN: 9780413777270
Category : Gran Bretanya
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
For some politicians and business leaders, power can become an intoxicating drug, and can affect their actions and decision-making in a most serious way. The ancient Greeks called it hubris, and identified arrogance and contempt for others' opinions as classic traits. They also took comfort in the knowledge that the Gods would punish the guilty ones--nemesis. In this revised edition, David Owen has drawn on new material he has written in Brain and other medical journals. He has also drawn on published memoirs of the main players in the Iraq War and on evidence given to the Iraq Inquiry. All this reinforces his earlier assertion that George W. Bush and Tony Blair developed hubris syndrome during their terms in office. From their behavior, beliefs, and governing style, Owen has analyzed the two leaders, with particular reference to the Iraq War, to show that their handling of the war was a litany of hubristic incompetence. During Blair's premiership, David Owen had several meetings and conversations with him that afforded a unique insight into his modus operandi. In this book, Owen presents a devastating critique of how Blair and Bush manipulated intelligence, ignored informed advice, and failed to plan for the aftermath of regime change in Iraq. Their messianic manner, excessive confidence, and belief that they would be vindicated by a "higher court," brought chaos to Iraq and resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties.

The Hubris Syndrome

The Hubris Syndrome PDF Author: David Owen
Publisher: Politico's Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
For many politicians, power seems to go to their head, and becomes a heady drug affecting every action they take. The Greeks called it hubris, where the hero wins glory, acclaim and success - but it is often followed by nemesis. David Owen suggests George Bush and Tony Blair developed a Hubristic Syndrome while in power. He provides a powerful analysis, looking at their behaviour, beliefs and governing style, in particular the nature of their hubristic incompetence in handling the Iraq War. Both of them, and in her last year in office, Margaret Thatcher, developed many of the tell-tale and defining symptoms. A statesman, politician and medical doctor, with personal knowledge of the war in the Balkans, David Owen has unique insight into Blair's premiership, including several meetings and conversations with Blair from 1996-2004.

The Icarus Syndrome

The Icarus Syndrome PDF Author: Peter Beinart
Publisher: Melbourne Univ. Publishing
ISBN: 052285804X
Category : Ambition
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
In The Icarus Syndrome, Peter Beinart tells a tale as old as the Greeks - a story about the seductions of success. Beinart describes Washington on the eve of three wars - World War I, Vietnam and Iraq - three moments when American leaders decided they could remake the world in their image. Each time, leading intellectuals declared that history was over, and the spread of democracy was inevitable. Each time, a president held the nation in the palm of his hand. And each time, a war conceived in arrogance brought untold tragedy. In dazzling colour, Beinart portrays three extraordinary generations: the progressives who took America into World War I, led by Woodrow Wilson, the lonely preacher's son who became the closest thing to a political messiah the world had ever seen. The Camelot intellectuals who took America into Vietnam, led by Lyndon Johnson, who lay awake night after night shaking with fear that his countrymen considered him weak. And George W. Bush and the post-cold war neoconservatives, the romantic bullies who believed they could bludgeon the Middle East and liberate it at the same time. Like Icarus, each of these generations crafted 'wings' - a theory about America's relationship to the world. They flapped carefully at first, but gradually lost their inhibitions until, giddy with success, they flew into the sun. But every era also brought new leaders and thinkers who found wisdom in pain. They reconciled American optimism - our belief that anything is possible - with the realities of a world that will never fully bend to our will. In their struggles lie the seeds of American renewal today. Based on years of research, The Icarus Syndrome is a provocative and strikingly original account of hubris in the American century - and how we learn from the tragedies that result.

Hubristic Leadership

Hubristic Leadership PDF Author: Eugene Sadler-Smith
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1526453258
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Investigating the societal, economic, financial and reputational costs of hubristic leadership, with insights into the characteristics and causes of this phenomenon, and recommended safeguards to avoid hubris from happening in the first place. As research into hubristic leadership becomes increasingly popular following recent political developments, the book adopts an inter-disciplinary approach to investigating this form of leadership. Outlining what causes hubristic leadership in the first place, the author looks at how it’s potentially destructive consequences can be anticipated and avoided through an informed stance of moderation, critical analysis and reflexivity. Examples are drawn from business and politics including the Lehmann Brothers, BP and Deepwater Horizon, Blair and Bush in the Iraq Invasion, NASA, and Donald Trump. Ideal reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students in business and management, leadership, and organizational behaviour. Check out the Hubris Hub for further information on hubristic leadership, including a regularly updated blog written by author Eugene Sadler-Smith.

In Sickness and in Power

In Sickness and in Power PDF Author: David Owen
Publisher: Methuen Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
This study of illness in heads of government between 1901 and 2007 considers how illness and therapy - both physical and mental - affect the process of government and decision-making, leading to acts of folly, in the sense of stupidity or rashness.

Hubris: The Road to Donald Trump

Hubris: The Road to Donald Trump PDF Author: David Owen
Publisher: Methuen
ISBN: 0413778401
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
In Hubris: The Road to Donald Trump, David Owen analyses and describes the mental and physical condition of US Presidents and UK Prime Ministers with a particular view that what went before paved the way to President Trump. Of recent leaders there have been alcoholics, depressives, narcissists, populists and those affected by hubris syndrome and driven by their religious beliefs.

The Pandemic Century

The Pandemic Century PDF Author: Mark Honigsbaum
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1787382648
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Like sharks, epidemic diseases always lurk just beneath the surface. This fast-paced history of their effect on mankind prompts questions about the limits of scientific knowledge, the dangers of medical hubris, and how we should prepare as epidemics become ever more frequent. Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet, despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu and the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles to the 1930 'parrot fever' pandemic and the more recent SARS, Ebola, and Zika epidemics, the last 100 years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms. Like man-eating sharks, predatory pathogens are always present in nature, waiting to strike; when one is seemingly vanquished, others appear in its place. These pandemics remind us of the limits of scientific knowledge, as well as the role that human behaviour and technologies play in the emergence and spread of microbial diseases.

Impostor Syndrome

Impostor Syndrome PDF Author: Kathy Wang
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062855301
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
A Good Morning America Buzz Pick * Named A Best Book of Summer by Entertainment Weekly,New York Post, Buzzfeed, TheSkimm, PopSugar, Bustle, HelloGiggles, Ms. Magazine, Oprah Daily, USA Today, Philadelphia Inquirer, Lit Hub * Named A Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by The Millions, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, Crimereads A sharp and prescient novel about women in the workplace, the power of Big Tech, and the looming threat of foreign espionage from Kathy Wang, “a skilled satirist of the northern California dream” (Harper’s Bazaar) In 2006 Julia Lerner is living in Moscow, a recent university graduate in computer science, when she’s recruited by Russia’s largest intelligence agency. By 2018 she’s in Silicon Valley as COO of Tangerine, one of America’s most famous technology companies. In between her executive management (make offers to promising startups, crush them and copy their features if they refuse); self promotion (check out her latest op-ed in the WSJ, on Work/Life Balance 2.0); and work in gender equality (transfer the most annoying females from her team), she funnels intelligence back to the motherland. But now Russia's asking for more, and Julia’s getting nervous. Alice Lu is a first generation Chinese American whose parents are delighted she’s working at Tangerine (such a successful company!). Too bad she’s slogging away in the lower echelons, recently dumped, and now sharing her expensive two-bedroom apartment with her cousin Cheri, a perennial “founder’s girlfriend”. One afternoon, while performing a server check, Alice discovers some unusual activity, and now she’s burdened with two powerful but distressing suspicions: Tangerine’s privacy settings aren’t as rigorous as the company claims they are, and the person abusing this loophole might be Julia Lerner herself. The closer Alice gets to Julia, the more Julia questions her own loyalties. Russia may have placed her in the Valley, but she's the one who built her career; isn’t she entitled to protect the lifestyle she’s earned? Part page-turning cat-and-mouse chase, part sharp and hilarious satire, Impostor Syndrome is a shrewdly-observed examination of women in tech, Silicon Valley hubris, and the rarely fulfilled but ever-attractive promise of the American Dream.

Realm of Lesser Evil

Realm of Lesser Evil PDF Author: Jean-Claude Michea
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745646212
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
Winston Churchill said of democracy that it was ‘the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’ The same could be said of liberalism. While liberalism displays an unfailing optimism with regard to the capacity of human beings to make themselves ‘masters and possessors of nature’, it displays a profound pessimism when it comes to appreciating their moral capacity to build a decent world for themselves. As Michea shows, the roots of this pessimism lie in the idea – an eminently modern one – that the desire to establish the reign of the Good lies at the origin of all the ills besetting the human race. Liberalism’s critique of the ‘tyranny of the Good’ naturally had its costs. It created a view of modern politics as a purely negative art – that of defining the least bad society possible. It is in this sense that liberalism has to be understood, and understands itself, as the ‘politics of lesser evil’. And yet while liberalism set out to be a realism without illusions, today liberalism presents itself as something else. With its celebration of the market among other things, contemporary liberalism has taken over some of the features of its oldest enemy. By unravelling the logic that lies at the heart of the liberal project, Michea is able to shed fresh light on one of the key ideas that have shaped the civilization of the West.

Crisis

Crisis PDF Author: Sylvia Walby
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 150950320X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
We are living in a time of crisis which has cascaded through society. Financial crisis has led to an economic crisis of recession and unemployment; an ensuing fiscal crisis over government deficits and austerity has led to a political crisis which threatens to become a democratic crisis. Borne unevenly, the effects of the crisis are exacerbating class and gender inequalities. Rival interpretations – a focus on ‘austerity’ and reduction in welfare spending versus a focus on ‘financial crisis’ and democratic regulation of finance – are used to justify radically diverse policies for the distribution of resources and strategies for economic growth, and contested gender relations lie at the heart of these debates. The future consequences of the crisis depend upon whether there is a deepening of democratic institutions, including in the European Union. Sylvia Walby offers an alternative framework within which to theorize crisis, drawing on complexity science and situating this within the wider field of study of risk, disaster and catastrophe. In doing so, she offers a critique and revision of the social science needed to understand the crisis.