In Development:

 

Wuthering Heights

 

Wuthering Heights cover 

By Emily Brontë.  Read by Marion Castle.  Music by Kevin Macleod.

 

 

Moby-Dick

 

Moby-Dick cover image 

By Herman Melville.  Read by James Conlan.  Music by Kevin Macleod.

 

 

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

 

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

By Harriet Jacobs.  Read by Audio Élan.  Music by Former American Slaves.

 

 

Don Quixote

 

Don Quixote Cover 

By Miquel De Cervantes.  Read by Joe Rodriguez.  Music by Kevin MacLeod.

 

 

Emma

 

Emma cover image 

By Jane Austen.  Read by Gina Mellotte.  Music by Kevin MacLeod.

 

 

CurrentNews:

 

Bob Noble Wins FMPTA Best Audio Award

 

UFOs FMPTA Award

 

The Hilton Orlando/Altamonte Springs hosted the Florida Motion Picture & Television Association's 21st Annual Crystal Reel Awards Gala on November 6th where Bob Noble won Best Narration/Voice-Over/Male in an Audio Program for M.P. Marshall's UFOs: God's Celestial Airforce

 

RecentEvents:

 

The Delphinus Chronicles wins first place in the audiobook division at the Hollywood Book Festival

 

 

Based in the capital of show business, the Hollywood Book Festival aims to spotlight literature worthy of further consideration by the talent-hungry pipeline of the entertainment industry; and facilitate getting those works into the proper hands for consideration

 

Hollywood Book Festival

 

The Authoritarians   Audio demo button  Buy Button

The Authoritarians cover image

 


Bob Altemeyer studied the authoritarian personality for over 40 years while a professor of psychology. His experiments drew high praise from other scientists, and won the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Prize for Behavioral Science Research. This book summarizes his many findings, and has been widely acclaimed for the relaxed, conversational way the author presents far-reaching and penetrating insights into American life today.


Foreword by

John W. Dean


 

D. Nerhaugen

Why do Americans so often send imbeciles and gangsters to the republic's highest elective offices? Altemeyer's research and findings provide highly credible explanations.

Since there are already plenty of sound synopses of Altemeyer's work on these web pages, I see no need to add another. But I will say this:

"Must reads" seldom are. This one is. Buy it, read it (or listen to it) and pass it on. To say that Altemeyer's work demands a MUCH wider audience is quite the understatement.

Edward Flaspoehler

I just finished Robert Altemeyers book, The Authoritarians. I read is as quickly as I could, in two days, and was fascinated the entire time. I am now recommending it to everyone I know.

The other review on this page gets the gist of the book correct, so I will not go into that. I will just say that, now that I have finished the book, as I always do, I am looking for the negative reviews. I CANNOT FIND ANY!   Read it!.

Ray, Morgan Utah

This turned out to be one of my favorite Audible books so far along with The Drunkards Walk. How Randomness Rules our Lives. I think it's actually an important book that's been flying below the radar because it wasn't commercially published. At least not at first, it may be now. Liberals, moderates, and conservatives alike, really need to read it. When you've finished you'll better understand not just Nazi Germany, but the IRA in Ireland, the Cultural Revolution under Mao, the war in Yugoslavia under Karadzic and even Pat Robertson. Explaining Pat Robertson is no small accomplishment but the authors index is the best explanation yet of radical Muslims as well. Have you ever wondered why there seems to be an endless supply of people willing to blow themselves up? Well that's because there is an endless supply and this book explains why that is.

It all revolves around a way of thinking called the RWA index. RWA stands for Right Wing Authoritarian. An unfortunate title since it doesn't help his credibility with conservatives and conservatives need to read this as much as anyone. He chose this title I assume because in the US and Canada these people tend to gravitate to the political right more than the left but they're found on the left as well. A better title might have been the Muddle Headed Followers index.

The index itself is politically neutral. Everyone knows a few of these of people. They're the ones in the office who don't reason from fact to opinion. Instead, they choose an opinion that fits the way they want the world to be, then select facts that support them. I personally know so many of these people I've begun to think that reasoning from fact to opinion must be something rare and difficult and maybe should be taught as a mandatory part of a civics class. It doesn't seem to come naturally in my area. But then look at where I'm from.

Mary B. Weathers

I am on my second "listen" of this book through Audible. As a psychologist myself, I want data to go with opinions. This book has data in spades. This is his first popular book on the topic of authoritarianism, following research that goes back four decades in the US and Canada, as well as collaboration with research in Russia. It explains in clear language, how the right wing authoritarian followers think, how they act, and how they are so gullible to being led by social dominators. While he does make political statements, these statements are backed up by a wealth of research.

Any progressive who reads this and has watched what has happened to the US, will understand why we are so exasperated with seemingly intelligent people who seem so illogical, irrational, hypocritical, and dogmatic. They are often of fundamental religious persuasion. These people will follow their socially dominant leaders aggressive and sometimes violent acts without question. The socially dominant leaders whom they follow are truly frightening as they often masquerade as "one of them", but are actually without conscience and totally consumed by hunger for power. I would call this, for me, as enlightening as any book I have read in a decade.

Emil, Denmark—

A must read for everyone.  While Bob Altemeyer's personal political stance is occasionally discernable from his analysis of data, and his investigation of the subject is quite America-centric, Altemeyer provides us with a paradigm of surprising explanatory and even predictive power.

If you are interested in politics or psychology, I highly recommend this book. If you wind up taking offense at its presentation of scientific data, perhaps you need this book more than anyone. Authoritarianism is a potential danger to all of us, even on the individual level, and if you find you dislike hearing about it, it's a sure sign you need to listen more closely.

James Jensen—

There are a number of people who will be offended by this book and dismiss it as a propaganda - most without even reading it. That is precisely what Bob Altemeyer's work predicts.

In this book, Altemeyer presents his lifetime of research into what is known as Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA). If that terms does not scare you off immediately, you'll find in this book that (1) it isn't as politically-charged as it sounds (Stalinists were high-RWA left-wingers), and that (2) the evidence for this personality disorder is overwhelming.

Simply put, the modern right-wing has become the political home for nearly all of the more than one-quarter of the population who support established traditions zealously and uncritically. This has given an audience to the corrupt politicians of the "New Right" who can be sure of support simply through saying what their followers want to hear.

Perhaps most shocking is that the percentage of the population who score highly on the RWA scale is only a few points short of the percentage which still support the Iraq war and who continued to support Nixon during Watergate.

Altemeyer concludes that, due to the very nature of right-wing authoritarianism, there is simply no easy solution. The best approach is to offer a hand of friendship, to offer to work together on shared goals in hopes of broadening the authoritarians' perspective.

The Authoritarians is a must-read book for liberals, moderates, and conservatives alike who are troubled by the extremism and corruption of modern neoconservatives.

Paul Sunstone—

Last week, Erik left a comment on this blog with a link to a free online book, The Authoritarians, by the research psychologist and professor, Bob Altemeyer.  Erik is a bright guy, so I was confident I would not be wasting my time to check out the link.  Now that I have checked out the link, I feel like naming my next born illegitimate child after Erik.  I got so wrapped up in the book, I read it in one sitting.

The book describes the psychology of authoritarian followers and leaders.  It does so in clear and easy to read prose.  Bob Altemeyer has a wonderful sense of humor and he laces his book with witty and funny comments.  But the core of the book is comprised of the scientific studies of authoritarianism that Altemeyer has been doing since 1966.  This is a hugely informative book that makes sense of a whole lot of stuff that’s going on in America and the world today.

Altemeyer will change how you view militant authoritarianism forever.  For one thing, he demonstrates that it is not merely a political problem but profoundly a psychological problem.  Consequently, there are no politics that will make it entirely go away.  Instead, it must be repeatedly confronted and defeated in every generation — if representative democracy is to be preserved.

I recommend that everyone — and that means everyone and his or her dog — read the book’s introduction (at the very least).  You can then decide for yourself whether you want to go on to read the rest of the book.  But please give yourself the opportunity to make that decision by reading the introduction (The introduction begins six pdf pages down — you can skip the dedication, which comes first).  If you read the book and do not then fervently wish to name your next illegitimate child after Erik — who, after all, gave us the heads-up on this book — I will be absolutely astonished.  And so will your child.

Last, please consider passing this book around.  It’s free and accessible to anyone who can read it online.

Larry Ogg—

As you may recall, Ponerology shined a great deal of light on and mainly concentrated on the psychopaths who gain political power, revealing their cunning methods of deceit, their cold hearts void of conscience and their uncanny ability too manipulate information and the minds of social conscience in mass, which in turn leads too the massive death and destruction (as history shows) of entire civilizations, a history that any sane person might hope of not repeating, but fears the inevitable is close at hand. Additionally, as essential as Ponerology is to understanding the minds and methods of a psychopaths, I don’t feel that it covered, in great depth, the minds of those who do or don’t fall under their spell; the book called the “The Authoritarians” on the other hand, does just that.

I finished reading it about three days ago and I know you will love it and give it a great review. It is extremely simple to read and understand, and is the results of psychological surveys and experiments done on thousands of people over the years since world war II, the hope being, an understanding of how and why so many people fall under the spell and follow tyrannical leaders.

To have an in-depth understanding of what Bob Altemeyer calls the authoritarian leaders, we would read Ponerology. To have an in-depth understanding of those who fall under the spell and support such leaders, we would read the “The Authoritarians”.  I hope you enjoy it and thanks for another great OP.

Brian Wagner—

I didn't actually listen to the cd but I read the book so I'll repeat my review here.

It's really unfortunate that this book never made the mainstream. It may be party because it's available free [...]

Altemeyer's 'The Authoritarians' is a compilation of years of research he's done on a personality type he identified and labeled "Right Wing Authoritarian." This label does not imply that all authoritarians are right wing. There can be left wing authoritarians but we simply don't see them in the US and Canada for his research was mostly done.

Though the webpage has some political diatribe it is mostly absent from the book which explores the various beliefs of RWAs. RWAs include very few in their 'in' group and vilify their 'out' group. They have many hypocrisy's which they don't notice due to their highly compartmentalized thinking. They respect might over reason and are willing to do terrible things under the direction of a proper authority, especially if the person on the receiving end is some sort of outsider. Their fear of the world and change fuels their aggression. Worst of all, they control a large portion of our government.

While Right Wing Authoritarians can be considered dangerous fools, Social Dominators (also discussed in the book) could arguably be considered evil. They view people as tools to be used for their own benefit, are uninterested in helping others unless they will receive more in return and delight in using RWAs for their own purposes.

While the RWA personality corresponds very highly with fundamentalist religion, it is distinct. Anyone who's read Sam Harris' 'Letter to a Christian Nation' or 'The End of Faith' should give this a read. After reading this I believe that while religion may focus people to maladaptive ends, this book really gets at the root of the problem.

Jp Christy—

I'm on my second listen of this book. I value the insights and the science behind them. Professor Altemeyer's relaxed reading of his own material makes this information an enjoyable listen. More importantly, his explanation of the difference between a conservative outlook and an authoritarian personality has enabled me to understand how a vocal, fearful minority can shout down the civil discussions and nuanced outlook of a less fearful, less forceful majority.

I have been recommending this book to liberals and conservatives alike. Well done!

Miller—

Way back, Blake Stacey recommended to me The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer. It is a free online book about the psychology of the authoritarian personality. I get the impression that Blake Stacey is in the habit of recommending this book to everyone. Allow me to echo this recommendation to you, my readers. It is a short, easy, and fun read. Bob is rather casual can chatty. He never gets bogged down with numbers, and yet he is clear about how all his conclusions are supported by scientific data. And did I mention it's available free?

The Authoritarians is one of those books that tries to answer the question, "What the hell is wrong with people?" The Bush administration, the religious right, the Creationist movements... Personally, I'm a moderate, an independent, but I won't touch the Republican party because it has gone to hell. Bob Altemeyer, I suspect is in the same position. But while I might advance few pet theories as to why this is, all I have to defend them is my super-humble rhetoric. Altemeyer's claims are not pet theories, but scientific findings. They could easily have been falsified, but instead they are strongly supported by a variety of surveys and studies.

His explanation? There is a certain kind of personality that is well-correlated with all these problems. Altemeyer calls it Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA). First, I should clarify a few things. Authoritarianism does not refer to the authorities themselves, but the people who would obey those authorities. Also, "right-wing" is used in the sense of being lawful or proper, not in the sense of being political conservative. RWAs in the US tend to be very politically conservative, but those in soviet Russia would probably be socialists. (There is also such a thing as Left-Wing Authoritarianism but that is not covered by the book.) Right-Wing Authoritarians exhibit the following qualities: submission to the established authorities in society, aggression in the name of these authorities, and wanting to enforce conventionalism on the rest of society.

Now, if you're like me, you're skeptical of the efficacy of any such survey. But it turns out that there is a very rigorous way to create a valid survey that involves testing many possible questions and measuring their correlations. He briefly mentioned a similar survey developed in the 1940s that was discredited because of its poor design. The new one is scientifically tested. You might ask, "How do we know that this is all related to authoritarianism as opposed to religious fundamentalism?" We know because the RWA scale correlates with the above qualities better than any fundamentalist scale does. Altemeyer deserves lots of skeptical points for carefully explaining all this.

The most interesting part might be where Altemeyer suggests solutions to the problem. According to him, it would probably be ineffective to argue with these people directly. Instead, we should work with high RWAs them towards common goals, since lets them see outside of their community--high RWAs tend to feel a lot of pressure to be "normal", so we just need to show them. We should increase the visibility minorities. And we should promote higher education, which tends to decrease people's RWA scores. He also says it would help if we reduced fear-mongering, or if we taught kids to question authorities, but he doesn't think either of these things will realistically happen.

Aside from critical thinking, one of the major topics of skepticism is understanding why people think the way they do. By that standard, this is a great book for skeptics. It gives plenty of insight into RWAs and what makes them tick.

Mathboy—

The Authoritarians is one of the half a dozen or so books you'll read in your life that actually will change your life.  The book is authored by a researcher from the University of Manitoba named Bob Altemeyer who has spent 40 years investigating the question of who, why, and how people become what he terms "right wing authoritarians" which is not to imply that only right wingers are authoritarians, BTW.

I read the Authoritarians and I can tell you it explains a lot. It explains who and what Rush Limbaugh is, how he operates, why he lies and why it doesn't bother him. Ditto Ann Coulter, Roger Ailes and the whole Fox News crew and why they don't see themselves as everyone else (except other RWAs) sees them. It explains what the relationship between the kind of people who are in "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power"  - and the people who empower them by voting for them and why they're always dangerous.

It also explains what we're seeing right now for instance in the 23rd Congressional race in Upstate N.Y. for anyone who is following that saga. (RWAs can't stand anyone who doesn't exactly adhere to their ideology)

Perfect examples of RWAs are the Fundamentalists / Evangelical Christians, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney but also probably a lot of people you have to deal with on a regular basis, for instance your father-in-law or your neighbor. Understanding what makes these people tick, what they'll likely to do (or try to do) and why they're impervious to reasoned argument or contradictory evidence changed my view of the world; how many books can you say that about? Precious few.

This book deserves to be very widely disseminated and it's lessons learned by all engaged, rational people because the people this books exposes aren't going away, aren't going to start playing fair and to the extent they actually get into power, wreak havoc up to and including end of the world scenarios. A perfect example of the later is WWII where the authoritarian followers of Hitler (sorry for the Hitler comparison but actually it's EXACTLY correct in this context- most of these researchers - Altemeyer, Milgram et. al. started studying their topic as a reaction to the "how could it happen" question about 1932 Germany) catapulted Hitler into power and then supported everything he did, all the while identifying "enemies" and "impure" races as the enemy to be exterminated.

His work is a kind of continuation of Stanley Milgram's famous work in the area of obedience to authority, which I also recommend: Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (Perennial Classics).

I think you'll find this book "explains a lot." Many scattered impressions about the enemies of freedom and equality become solidified by science and coherently connected here.

You can get the audio book which is a great listen while you're driving or walking the dog and is read by the researcher himself- I own it and love it.

Telling other people about this book should be counted as a public service to society.

 


 

John W. Dean

 

Foreword by John W. Dean

Former Nixon White House counsel and New York Times best-selling author

 

I am really pleased that Bob Altemeyer invited me to provide a brief foreword to the audio edition of his remarkable and timely book – The Authoritarians.  It is timely because of the election of Barack Obama to be President of the United States.  An election in which Obama defeated a poster boy and poster girl for authoritarianism: Arizonian Republican Senator John McCain, who sought the presidency with Alaska Republican Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate.  When you listen to the material that follows you will understand why they both are authoritarians, and what that could have meant for the country had they been elected.  Their negative and nasty campaign was a usual bag of unpleasant authoritarian tactics and tricks. 

Barack Obama and his running mate Senator Joe Biden soundly defeated not only the authoritarianism of McCain and Palin, but also that of President George Bush and his partner Vice President Dick Cheney.  Allow me to be blunt about Bush and Cheney. Without hesitation I can tell you – and indeed I have written about it in my books [Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush and Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches] – that eight years of authoritarian rule by Bush and Cheney has nearly ruined the United States.

For example, they used false evidence and lies to take the United States to war in Iraq, they shamed all Americans with their efforts to deal with terrorism by creating our first gulag at Guantanamo, not to mention secret prisons scattered around the world, and the use of renditions and torture to deal with anyone they declared to be an enemy combatant.  To top off their disastrous rule they have shattered the world’s economy because of their failure to regulate America’s financial markets.  Unfortunately, these are only a few of the glaring consequences of their authoritarian rule, but they make the point.

Still, you might ask, if Obama has defeated this type of authoritarian rule by winning over McCain and Palin, why should anyone be concerned?  As you will learn in the material that follows, authoritarians do not go away when they are defeated, they do not hear the massage that voters sent them, rather they merely regroup, redouble their effort, and go at it again because they are convinced of the correctness of their self righteous and dogmatic beliefs.  As Bob Altemeyer once told me, authoritarians are like Energizer Bunnies and they never give up or run out of energy.  

Although the Republican Party has been decimated by the Obama victory, and the polling data shows American have overwhelmingly rejected their thinking, the authoritarian conservative ideology that binds the core of the Republican Party together is busy preparing its come back, likely by becoming even more authoritarian.  In truth, no one needs to listen to the material that follows more than Republicans, for if they better understood the nature of authoritarianism, they might think twice before allowing those who are the bell ringers when tested for authoritarian traits from again becoming the driving force of their party and politics.  But as you will further learn, this is not the way the authoritarians will likely see it, for they are not very good at self-analysis.

Regardless, the only way to deal with the authoritarians is to understand them and their nature, how they think and act, and why they do so.  That is what you will discover from this audio book.  And in the event you are an authoritarian yourself, I can assure you that Dr. Bob, as he became known by his students, is not out to trash you, rather he understands you, for he is a social scientist, a psychologist, who is most interested in understanding people based on sold evidence about the way people think and act and then describing it.  In short, this book is not pejorative; rather it is explanatory.  This book is not a political tract, although it deals with political matters, nor is it a polemic.  Rather this book is synthesis of decades of research and empirical study.  It is about the way the world is, and the way some people are.

By training, I am an attorney and not a social scientist.  I discovered Bob Altemeyer’s work when researching a book about what had happened to conservatives – a book I had planned to write with the late Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the man who launched the conservative movement but had witnessed it evolve in ways he felt were anything but good conservatism.  Senator Goldwater disagreed when conservatives began embracing and pushing policies to abolish abortion or calling for school prayer, and demanding that so-called family values were the most important issues facing the nation, for he knew that matters like the economy and national security were far more important.  Goldwater was offended when conservatives embraced attitudes of incivility and tactics to literally destroy political opponents as their standard operating procedures.  And he felt the religious right, which was responsible for these changes in the conservative outlook and behavior, had corrupted conservatism and the Republican Party.  For this reason he wanted to understand how and why this had happened, why these people act as they do, and together we set out to find the answers and write a book we would call Conservatives Without Conscience, that title being a play on his 1960 classic The Conscience of a Conservative, which had launched the modern conservative movement.

Unfortunately, Senator Goldwater passed away before we found the answers, which I discovered in the decades of research work by Bob Altemeyer and others.   When I found this work I immediately recognized its value, for it explained these people, not to mention many of my former colleagues at the Nixon White House, from the president to other key members of his staff, as well as those I knew who would later take command of the contemporary Republican Party.

But when I first found Altemeyer’s work it was not in an easily digestible form like that found in this audio book; rather it resided in countless academic monographs and books written for other social and political psychologists, his professional peers and graduate students studying the social sciences.  This material was loaded with the technical jargon that is the norm for such academic writing, not to mention laced with statistical analysis supporting his findings.  Frankly, this material was over may head, but because I sensed it might help me understand conservatism, I ordered a dictionary of technical psychological terms and to refresh my knowledge of statistics – which I had not dealt with since graduate school forty some years earlier and had long forgotten – I ordered the Idiots Guide to Statistics and dove in and plowed my way through. 

After making my way across this foreign terrain, I realized I had found real answers which I had not known existed because this information had never been presented for the general reader.  Altemeyer’s research was startlingly revealing.  It explained why so many conservative Republicans (and a few very conservative Democrats) act as they do. When I examined whether I could trust this material, I discovered not only was Bob Altemeyer’s work verified by other studies, but his professional peers considered him a leader in this field of research.  They had even awarded him the equivalent of an academy award for his work.  The American Academy for the Advancement of Science had awarded him its highly prestigious prize for behavioral science research.  No higher accolade exists among social scientists.  So I knew not only did I have answers but they were based on solid science.

After getting my head around this work, and to be certain I understood it well enough to explain it to others – since the material for the general reader that you are about to listen to did not exist – I tracked Altemeyer down at the University of Manitoba, and sent him an email to ask if he would answer a few questions.  He graciously replied and we began a correspondence that would last to this day.  Not only did he guide me through his scientific studies to help me translate it into layman’s terms, but he thoughtfully read my manuscript as it related to his material, which assured me that I had correctly understood and translated his work.  It was about this time that I also began nudging Dr. Bob to write about his findings for the general reader, and before I knew it, he had done just that.  When I published a paperback edition of Conservatives Without Conscience in 2007, I was able to send readers to his online edition of his book, The Authoritarians, which he has written for general readers and you are about to listen to.  When I last checked over 100,000 people had visited his website where he first published The Authoritarians.  You can find it with a simple Google search.

For all these reasons I am delighted this book is now in audio so it can reach even more people.  Should anyone doubt the importance of Dr. Bob’s findings, allow me to share what he told me as I was concluding Conservatives Without Conscience.  I quoted him as follows on the last page of that book:

"Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American popula­tion is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds," Altemeyer told me. He added, "They would march America into a dictatorship and probably feel that things had im­proved as a result. The problem is that these authoritarian followers are much more active than the rest of the country. They have the men­tality of 'old-time religion' on a crusade, and they generously give money, time and effort to the cause. They proselytize; they lick stamps; they put pressure on loved ones; and they revel in being loyal to a co­hesive group of like thinkers. And they are so submissive to their lead­ers that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going to go away.”

Now listen to Dr. Bob as he shares a lifetime of study and explains why he has reached these troubling conclusions, which are not based on hunches or partisan feelings, rather on empirical evidence he developed over many decades of testing thousands upon thousands of people throughout the world.

 


 

audible.com button          CHP Bookstore button



Bookmark and Share