No One Man Should Have All That Power

How Rasputins Manipulate the World

By: Amos Barshad

Narrated by: Johnny Heller

An exploration of infamous, controversial figures and how they exert control

Amos Barshad has long been fascinated by the powerful. But not by elected officials or natural leaders - he's interested in their scheming advisors, the dark figures who wield power in the shadows. And, as Barshad shows in No One Man Should Have All That Power, the natural habitat of these manipulators is not only political backrooms. It's anywhere power dynamics exist - from Hollywood to drug cartels, from recording studios to the NFL.

In this wildly entertaining, wide-ranging, and insightful exploration of the phenomenon, Barshad takes listeners into the lives of more than a dozen of these notorious figures, starting with Grigori Rasputin. An almost mythical Russian mystic, Rasputin drank, danced, and healed his way into a position of power behind the last of the tsars. But not every one of these figures rose to power through lechery or magical cures. Barshad explores how they got there, how they wielded control, what led to their downfall or staved it off, and what lessons we can take from them, including how to spot Rasputins in the wild.

©2019 Amos Barshad (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

There are more layers to the onion.

An exploration of some modern day Rasputins across industries — who they are, how they wield influence, and the limits to their power. Interesting but not necessarily insightful. If you're looking to better understand behind-the-scenes machinations of power, there are better books out there. If you want some accessible case studies on this type of influencer, or some historical nuggets on Rasputin himself, this is an easy entry point.

Mostly entertaining, sometimes lost

This was definitely entertaining and sometimes enlightening. I liked the breadth of industry covered. I hate to sound nit picky but a few moments of editing were needed, like when you’re 3/4ths into the book and the author gives a 1-2 sentence description of who Rasputin is like we haven’t been listening to a book relating to Rasputin this whole time. I also wish the author went deeper into the control these “Rasputins” had and covered more obscure figures.
I also want to say something about the political bias in the book. I’m not a conservative nor some apologist, but the moments of forced virtue signaling and irrelevant political discussion would have been tolerable if it didn’t steal from an already shallow analysis of the Rasputin qualities of our subject.
Overall this was decent despite its flaws.