Book Club - The Dictator's Handbook

Welcome to the Seattle Intellectual Book Club! The 37th book we are reading is called "The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics" by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith.

Come grab a drink, discuss and hang out.

*Please note that it's okay if you don't finish the book but please make an effort to at least start reading the book.
**Outer Planet allows outside food so feel free to bring outside food to the venue as they only sell snacks.

Agenda:
6:30pm - 7:00pm Arrive & please buy drinks to support our venue if able
7:00pm - 8:30pm Group Discussion

Please let me know if you have any suggestions for upcoming books for the group to read, venues to meet at or any other constructive feedback on the format.

Here is the link to our Discord (text or voice chat rooms) to discuss anything book club related.
https://discord.gg/dRHj5ssaAy

Like what we are doing and want to chip in? Please consider donating. Donations will help cover the cost of the meet up registration. (about $400/year). Venmo is @Seattle_Intellectual_Bookclub

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Here is the book description from Amazon:

"“A lucidly written, shrewdly argued meditation on how democrats and dictators preserve political authority.” —Wall Street Journal

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith’s canonical book on political science turns conventional wisdom on its head. They start from a single proposition: leaders do whatever keeps them in power. They don’t care about the “national interest”—or even their subjects—unless they must. As Bueno de Mesquita and Smith show, democracy is essentially just a convenient fiction. Governments do not differ in kind, but only in the number of essential supporters or backs that need scratching. The size of this group determines almost everything about politics: what leaders can get away with and the quality of life or misery under them. And it is also the key to returning power to the people."