Read this at my wife’s suggestion as she had found it fascinating and I’d already heard many of the incidents in it relayed by her.
It is indeed a fascinating story; superficially you can read it as a voyeur looking into the actions of someone for whom most of the “normal” emotions and morals don’t seem to come naturally and marvel at their almost self-destructive actions, but I think you can get more from a deeper reading and trying to understand what it is really like for someone with this personality type. Trying to identify a sociopath is quite hard — you would have to know them very intimately or their actions would have to be obvious (closer to psychopathy), although many business leaders could easily fall into this category. I would not be surprised if the book’s suggested prevalence of 3–5% is actually much higher.
The book itself is compelling, although we get to hear perhaps more of the arguments with David than we really need — we seem to get a blow-by-blow account of every row that they ever had!
Recommended for anyone interested in other people and how they work.