Norman Cousins
This is a new edition of the book, and so very timely. If I had the money to give one book to every American, this would be it, followed by TYRANNICIDE The Story of the Second American Revolution and my all time God Bless America favorite, The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen.
Here is the author's opening statement:
“Connected to the tendency of power to corrupt are yet other tendencies that emerge from the pages of the historians:
* The tendency of power to drive intelligence underground;
* The tendency of power to become a theology, admitting no other gods before it;
* The tendency of power to distort and damage the traditions and institutions it was designed to protect;
* The tendency of power to create a language of its own, making other forms of communication incoherent and irrelevant;
* The tendency of power to spawn imitators, leading to volatile competition;
* The tendency of power to set the stage for its own use.