POWER AND GREED: A Short History of the World

According to Gigantès, an author and former assistant to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, the history of the world can be told as the story of greedy and power-hungry conquests. In spite of the efforts of leaders like Jesus or Buddha or Solon to offer principles of structure and order to societies, history has been shaped, he argues, by Grand Acquisitors who have broken society's rules in order to gain power. Gigantès first offers brief sketches of the rule-makers: among them are Moses, who introduced the 10 Commandments, Solon, who introduced democratic principles, and Jesus, who introduced the radical rule of forgiveness. Then the author briefly surveys history's Grand Acquisitors, ranging from the Roman empress Agrippina (who manipulated her husband, the emperor Claudius, and her son, Nero, in her quest to rule) to the conquest of Latin America by Cortés and Pizarro, to what he views as today's corporate exploitation of postcolonial countries. Gigantès discusses the Crusades as an example of the greedy desires of the Christian Church to expunge all heretical sects and to maintain power over the known world. While the book contains interesting moments, Gigantès's thesis that insatiable greed and unquenchable thirst for power underlie all of history does not offer an especially new way of reading world events. Better, more detailed sketches of his rule-makers and his Grand Acquisitors can be found elsewhere (in Anthony A. Barrett's Agrippina, for example). Gigantès provides no startling new insights into why this way of thinking is any more helpful than other ways of reading history. (Sept.)