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People may choose to ignore their animal heritage by interpreting their behavior as divinely inspired, socially purposeful, or even self-serving, all of which they attribute to being human, but they masticate, fornicate, and procreate, much as chimps and apes do, so they should have little cause to get upset if they learn that they act like other primates when they politically agitate, debate, abdicate, placate, and administrate, too."―from the book King of the Mountain presents the startling findings of Arnold M. Ludwig's eighteen-year investigation into why people want to rule. The answer may seem obvious―power, privilege, and perks―but any adequate answer also needs to explain why so many rulers cling to power even when they are miserable, trust nobody, feel besieged, and face almost certain death. Ludwig's results suggest that leaders of nations tend to act remarkably like monkeys and apes in the way they come to power, govern, and rule. Profiling every ruler of a recognized country in the twentieth century―over 1,900 people in all, Ludwig establishes how rulers came to power, how they lost power, the dangers they faced, and the odds of their being assassinated, committing suicide, or dying a natural death. Then, concentrating on a smaller sub-set of 377 rulers for whom more extensive personal information was available, he compares six different kinds of leaders, examining their characteristics, their childhoods, and their mental stability or instability to identify the main predictors of later political success. Ludwig's penetrating observations, though presented in a lighthearted and entertaining way, offer important insight into why humans have engaged in war throughout recorded history as well as suggesting how they might live together in peace.
- Sales Rank: #1088954 in Books
- Brand: Brand: The University Press of Kentucky
- Published on: 2002-05-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.02" h x 1.25" w x 5.98" l, 2.14 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 496 pages
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
From Publishers Weekly
Applying the insights of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology to political leadership, University of Kentucky emeritus professor of psychiatry Arnold M. Ludwig (How Do We Know Who We Are?) in King of the Mountain: The Nature of Political Leadership compares human rulers to primates, arguing that male politicians, like their simian alpha-male cohorts, are adept at gaining, exercising and keeping power. Ludwig then focuses closely on 377 world leaders, including Idi Amin, Tony Blair, Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan examining a string of traits to identify what he considers the factors that determine a leader's greatness: the addition of new territory, military prowess, economic prosperity, etc. Although Ludwig presents exhaustive research, many of his assumptions such as that all societies want a ruler because it's the natural order of things lack support. Moreover, Ludwig quickly loses sight of his (somewhat shaky) thesis that human politicians derive their leadership drive from their primate ancestors. 29 b&w illus.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Review
"The author measures each [leader] on an index of political greatness and explores the common predilection toward conflict and war. This book will serve readers at all levels."―Choice
"Every single page contains something striking and thought-provoking."―Fortean Times
"World politics is made by world leaders. These men (very few are women), who love to present themselves as having their people's interests at heart, are driven by the same desire for power recognized by every primatologist as a universal alpha male characteristic. Based on nearly two thousand profiles of political leaders, King of the Mountain drives this point home as no other book before."―Frans B. M. de Waal, author of Chimpanzee Politics
"A unique and important contribution. . . . The insights and analyses have far-reaching consequences to all fields of human endeavor, especially to politics. . . . Clear, cogent, and at times laced with humor."―George Schaller, Wildlife Conservation Society
"An enjoyable book. The statistical tables alone are worth the price."―Journal of the American Medical Association
"There is a richness to Ludwig's approach that is very appealing."―Leadership
"A scholarly attempt to measure political leadership with the cool objectivity of science."―New York Times
"A thoroughly enjoyable read. . . . Ludwig's eye for an anecdote is a good one, and provides much pleasure."―Nth Position
"Well-written, engaging, insightful. . . . Ludwig's book makes a bona fide contribution to the study of leadership."―Rhetoric and Public Affairs
"An arresting book that casts political science out the window and explains leadership through comparisons with chimpanzees, baboons, and gorillas."―Washington Post Book World
About the Author
Arnold M. Ludwig, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Kentucky, is the past winner of the Hofheimer Prize Award for Outstanding Research in his field and is the author of ten books, including How Do We Know Who We Are?: A Biography of the Self and The Price of Greatness, a study of the connection between creative genius and insanity.
Most helpful customer reviews
78 of 80 people found the following review helpful.
Ataturk and the lack of women
By Lycians
I found it curious that not one of the previous reviewers mention Ataturk in their reviews, not one, yet; Ataturk came out first in Ludwig's "Political Greatness Scale." How could all these reviewers simply ignore this? I also found his comments about the lack of women leaders at the highest level quite amazing.
In an on air interview with the author, Brian Lamb the host, interviews Arnold Ludwig:
[...]
Ludwig comments that "as I got into my work more and more, a number of questions began emerging that I could not answer, that puzzled me. For example, why was it that there were so few women rulers in the 20th century?"
He goes on to say "There were a total of 27 out of 1,941, which the percentage was 1.4 percent. And of those, half of them -- at least half -- were either wives of some famous politician, they'd borrowed their husbands' charisma, or daughters of him. And so that left -- if you look at just women who have made it on their own, that was about .75 percent. So the chances of a woman becoming a ruler in the 20th century were less than 100-to-1 odds, over 100-to-1 odds against it."
Mr Lamb then asks Ludwig about his "Political Greatness Scale" and says "the number one leader you found in the 20th century, from your political greatness scale, was Ataturk." and goes on to ask "But why Ataturk?" and Ludwig answers: "Let's look at what Ataturk did. And again, mind you, take this in the context of some of the other great leaders that -- some of the immortals I've mentioned. Ataturk created -- started Turkey. He dismantled the Ottoman empire, which was in existence at the time. He not only was the founder of the country, creating a country, but he caused a profound social change in Turkey. He introduced democracy into Turkey, somewhat a militant type of democracy, but a democracy nonetheless. He separated -- he was one of the -- first time in history to kind of separate church and state. In fact, even though it is predominantly a Muslim country, it's one of the few ones where certain types of freedoms are permitted..."
Ignorance of Ataturk is widespread, I hope this book will shed some more light on this man and his accomplishments. For an excellent resource on Ataturk see Ataturk: The Biography of the founder of Modern Turkey or this one which is an older, less comprehensive study Ataturk: A Biography of Mustafa Kemal, Father of Modern Turkey
18 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Why Men Rule
By Larry Arnhart
It is surprising that the proponents of evolutionary psychology have not paid more attention to this book. Ludwig argues that the human desire to be the supreme political ruler is rooted in the same biological nature that supports the dominance of alpha males among monkeys and apes. He supports this argument with analysis of the 1,941 chief executive rulers of the independent countries in the 20th century. He illustrates his points with lively anecdotes from the lives of the 377 rulers for whom he had sufficient biographical information.
Of the many interesting points that he makes, one is that he can explain one of the universal traits of human politics--that the highest positions of political rule tend to be filled predominantly by men. Political scientists rarely acknowledge--much less explain--this remarkable pattern of male dominance. Ludwig explains it as a manifestation of male primate tendencies rooted in the neurophysiology of the male as shaped by natural selection in evolutionary history. (Surprisingly, Ludwig does not mention Steven Goldberg's book WHY MEN RULE, which makes a similar argument.)
There is one bright spot in Ludwig's otherwise dark vision of politics dominated by Machiavellian brutality--he shows that democratic leaders in established democracies act with more restraint than those in other kinds of regimes. He doesn't explain this. But he could have argued that even this has biological roots by appealing to Christopher Boehm's claim (in his book HIERARCHY IN THE FOREST) that there is a biological basis not only for the natural desire for dominance but also for the natural desire to resist dominance, and that modern democracy expresses that ambivalent political nature by allowing ambitious individuals to compete for high office within the constraints of constitutional structures that protect subordinates from being exploited.
I have developed some of these points in my book DARWINIAN NATURAL RIGHT: THE BIOLOGICAL ETHICS OF HUMAN NATURE.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Monumental
By Steven Rubenzer
This is one of the most ambitious and interesting works I've ever seen. The author, apparently on his own and without institutional backing, took on the study of political leadership and addressed it empirically, coding 182 features of different leaders during the 20th century. Although replete with entertaining anecdotes, the book is based on statistical analyses that are presented in a clear and intuitive manner. There are literaly hundreds if not thousands of new facts and observations. By examining so many leaders and identiying types, he shows that individuals such as Hitler are not mere anomolies but share common traits - independance of interests, excellent memories, supreme confidence in their own vision, etc. This book is similar in approach to my own (Personality, Character, and Leadership in the White House) but extends analysis to leaders in all sorts of governments. My only complaint is that some of the metholdogy underying the study could be more fully explained (for example, how many raters provided jdugments on personality traits and how these were defined?), but most readers will not miss this. A tour de force.
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