A Generation of Sociopaths
Bruce Cannon Gibney builds a book-length case that America's Baby Boom generation, taken as a political cohort, has governed with an unusual disregard for future consequences. He walks through fiscal policy, entitlements, infrastructure, environmental policy, criminal justice, and higher education, arguing in each area that the generation in power has enjoyed the benefits of prior investment while declining to pay forward the same. The framing device is provocative on purpose, using the DSM criteria for antisocial personality disorder as a lens on collective behavior rather than a diagnosis of individuals. Gibney supports the argument with a wall of statistics on debt, tax burden, and generational transfers, and closes with a set of reform proposals aimed at rebalancing the ledger. The book is written to argue and to irritate, and has become a touchstone for younger commentators trying to explain what they inherited.
What you might want to know about A Generation of Sociopaths
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Venture investor Bruce Cannon Gibney argues that the Baby Boomers, as a cohort, have run the country in ways that fit the clinical profile of sociopathy.
Galloway shares the book's central argument about generational theft in his own writing and lectures, and cites Gibney as one of the sharpest expressions of the case that older Americans have systematically extracted wealth from younger ones.
No. Gibney is explicit that he is applying the criteria to a cohort rather than individuals, using the framework as a diagnostic lens for collective behavior.
A Generation of Sociopaths was written by Bruce Cannon Gibney, published in 2017 by Hachette Books.
A Generation of Sociopaths is 464 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, A Generation of Sociopaths takes most readers 7 to 10 hours to finish.
A Generation of Sociopaths is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.