Wherever there is a puppet master, an eminence grise, a Svengali, a manipulator, a secret controller – that is a Rasputin.

Author Amos Barshad, fascinated by the shadowy and powerful, started noticing manipulative figures everywhere, from pop culture to politics. He developed a seven-point system to identify the qualities that Rasputin figures meet. They include exhibiting controversial control; having enemies and a personal agenda; working behind the scenes; exercising limited control, meaning over one prominent figure instead of a congregation, for example; and lacking the abilities to act themselves.

Barshad says for him, it became a Baader-Meinhof situation, where once he began looking for Rasputins, even just noticing them, he started seeing them everywhere. It’s an inarguably interesting topic. Most of these are well-known stories for those following politics or pop culture, but seeing how the manipulative figures fit the Rasputin points didn’t do much for me. It’s a promising idea, but I didn’t learn much new.

It’s not particularly in-depth, and rhetorically asks more questions than it answers. Where it succeeds most is in making you consider how many of these types there may potentially be, and noticing where you can identify them yourself.

The author has a Jon Ronson-esque style, using comical observations to pad out interviews reproduced in too much detail. But unlike with Ronson I didn’t get on with the writing or tone, which may not bother others, and I don’t want to criticize too heavily as I read an advance that may have been edited before publication.

As for the catchy title, Kanye West’s “Power,” the song stuck in my head for the duration of reading this, it might lead you to wonder about Kanye’s significance, if any. He has two brief mentions, in the Scooter Braun chapter (he of Justin Bieber management) but otherwise he’s neither subject nor referenced in any form. The title’s source never gets a nod, nor is it particularly apt. Sure, it’s about men (and the occasional woman, to be fair) acting as shadow manipulators in the modern era (Rasputin is the only historical example), but it makes no strong argument that they shouldn’t be doing it.

Rasputin himself is handled most deftly, maybe because out of all the figures covered, he’s the oldest and has a century’s worth of scholarly research to place him in historical and sociopolitical context. I got bored, having recently read Douglas Smith’s Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs, which was a primary source here, but otherwise it’s a great chapter for the Rasputin-curious. We’ve had countless thinkpieces and books on Steve Bannon, and to a lesser extent Jared Kushner, and in the entertainment realm Stanley Kubrick, among others here; but Rasputin is the most documented and analyzable. Barshad follows up with the people in charge of his apartment in St. Petersburg and it was a nice look at the legacy of the legend.

A few manipulators were interesting choices, like Gordon Lish, editor of Raymond Carver’s short stories; the singer Kesha and her ex-manager, Dr. Luke; and the scandal of the former South Korean president and her top aide.

I was iffy on the research from some points like this: “Rasputinesque – a term that, yes, I made up – is, frankly, one we do not use often enough.” Did he though? Where’s the proof on that odd claim?

Trump’s former advisor Sam Nunberg is covered, and there was some thoughtful analysis of the administration, like that he identifies Trump as being “immune” to Rasputins. But the argument isn’t entirely convincing, like when he quotes Fire and Fury as noting that the last person to speak with Trump is the one with “enormous influence”, likening it to Rasputin and Tsar Nicholas: “They used to say that the most powerful people in Russia were Tsar Nicholas and whoever the tsar had spoken to last. As one observer commented, ‘Tsar Nicholas is like a feather pillow. He bore the impression of the last person to sit on him.”

The coverage on Jared Kushner was somewhat disappointing, but I was especially annoyed by the inclusion of a quote from a former New York Observer reporter on Kushner: “Superficially, there’s a lot to be jealous of. He has a lot of money. He’s a good-looking dude. He has a pretty wife and ostensibly really sweet and charming kids.” Seriously? This is what people are jealous of? What a mess of surfacey cliches that ends up showing that everyone is as shallow as the people they’re criticizing. Blergh.

Some quotes:

“Even when the pop star’s rallying cry is individualism above all else, we know there has been a process.”

“Kesha’s case brought a wave of discourse about the ugly things that happen in the back corridors of power.”

“Let a bunch of Rasputins loose in the world’s greatest halls of power, and let them go to town on each other. As Trump’s scandal-riddled former advisor Roger Stone has said, “The administration is like the French Revolution. You never know who will be beheaded next.”

This could’ve benefited from tighter editing, or maybe I wasn’t the right audience for it, having already read a lot about the politics and being less interested in some of the pop culture.

Where does the person end, and the Rasputin begin? And if the end product is worth our time, does it matter?

Amos Barshad, a freelance writer formerly of Grantland (RIP; a great site that met its doom too quickly), has always been obsessed with those who manipulate their way to power. People who don’t have the official position, but are working behind the scenes to influence those who make the real decisions. He calls these people “Rasputins” because of Grigori Rasputin. For those that may not be familiar with this character, Rasputin was a mystic, healer, and unofficial advisor to the Romanov family under Czar Nicholas II, the last czar of the Romanov dynasty. I’ll leave the details to Barshad, who relays the story in much more detail than I could ever pretend to (although I too have been captivated at times by the Rasputin story, Barshad has done a lot of research and it shows). However, part of Rasputin’s importance lies in the fact that his influence took place just before the Bolshevik Revolution, which would change Russia (and the world) forever. Rasputin’s control of the czar is one of the many causes of the tempestuous climate of Russia in 1917.

No One Man Should Have All That Power is partially about Rasputin himself (the first and last chapters specifically address his story), but is mainly concerned with the Rasputin archetype. Barshad literally travels the world to find examples of “Rasputinism”. He finds these examples in South Korea, Nicaragua, and modern-day Russia. He also examines Americans who fit the same mold: Scooter Braun (manager of Justin Bieber, Carly Rae Jepsen, Kanye West, etc.), Alex Guerrero (Tom Brady’s masseur and “body coach”), Stanley Kubrick (director of The Shining and, explored in this book, Eyes Wide Shut) and many more. In the process he both fleshes out the idea of Rasputinism and entertains with these examples.

My reaction to the book depended on the chapter. Some I found fascinating, such as Alex Guerrero (definitely a con artist, IMHO), Scooter Braun, and the chapter set in Nicaragua that focuses in on the wife of Daniel Ortega and features an interview with his daughter. Barshad’s reporter chops were on full display in each of these instances, and the stories amazed me. Other stories, most notably the series about the Trump White House, disappointed me. Maybe it’s that I intentionally avoided books like Fire and Fury and felt like I was tricked into reading one for a few chapters, or maybe I thought Barshad didn’t have much to add to what I already have heard and I just wanted to move on to something new. Either way, the only thing redeeming about some of the late chapters was a quick examination of what made President Obama un-Rasputin-able, a habit of “pressure-testing the preferred position” by playing devil’s advocate or inviting dissenters into the room that “otherwise, based on pure rank, (would not) have the status to be in that room”. That method of obtaining and testing possible counselors intrigued me, and I filed it away. Other than that tidbit, however, I thought the chapters about both Trump and Obama could have been cut without losing anything important. They were also, coincidentally or not, the chapters that didn’t seem to contribute any original reporting or interviews.

Barshad did unearth a great possible explanation for Rasputin’s alleged healing power from a Rasputin biographer. Barshad writes that maybe Rasputin “healed” the czar’s son Alexei of his hemophilia partially because he didn’t do anything invasive to his body (allowing more clotting to occur) and partially because he caused a sense of calm in Alexei’s mother which transferred, as emotions tend to do, to Alexei himself. The placebo effect is strong. And maybe that’s why Rasputin’s have so much power in the first place. Barshad doesn’t explicitly make this claim (another problem with the book is that it doesn’t give many conclusions, just examples), but I was still able see the thread throughout. People have an initial sense of trust in a person, and they keep their trust in the “Rasputin” even when they shouldn’t anymore.

At the end of it all, I was glad to read Barshad’s book because of his investigative skills and his entertaining writing style. If you’re interested in stories of great manipulators, check it out. There is a bit of language and some graphic descriptions of sexual exploits (especially for Rasputin), just FYI. It’s not perfect, and it’s not going to reach everyone the same way, but I think if you’ve read Shea Serrano or some other great Grantland writers, you’re in good hands.

I received this book as an eARC courtesy of Abrams Press and NetGalley, but my opinions are my own.

Rating: 5 out of 5

No One Man Should Have All That Power got my attention for two main reasons.  The first is that one of my favorite writers, Shea Serrano, did the blurb on the front and the other was that the reference to a Kanye West song made me laugh.  Then I read the description and decided I was all in.  I didn’t realize I could be more all in until I saw that the author was going to frame all of his discussions of people in the background with power by using Rasputin as the model.  Rasputin has always been a fascinating figure to me (although I am not as obsessed and thorough as the author was) and being able to learn more about him and his life and then using it as a tool to evaluate others was something that worked perfectly for me.

I think the first thing to be open about is that since each chapter features a different person and area of power, there are some chapters that are just intrinsically going to be more interesting to an individual than others.  That said, I found myself being pleasantly surprised by several of the chapters that I initially thought would be some of the less interesting.  This is the type of book that I would learn something interesting, about a publishing Rasputin for example, and immediately want to turn to Alyssa to share the interesting thing I had learned.  I do not think there was a single chapter that I found to be uninteresting and more than half the chapters I was enthralled with.

The book is written in a way that is accessible.  I felt like I was learning a ton about these individuals and ever chapter was clearly well researched, but it read very smoothly and not at all like a textbook which I appreciated.  Barshad had also clearly prepared for the type of people he would be talking to and is incredibly thoughtful and transparent about his process as he writes about each "Rasputin."  I found I couldn’t stop reading halfway through a chapter and often wanted to push on right to the next one.

Overall, I thought the book was excellent.  The topic itself was super interesting and the people chosen to be covered were each interesting in their own unique ways.  I found the book incredibly easy to read and felt like I had learned some interesting things both in areas I already had some familiarity with and in others that I previously knew nothing about.  If you have interest in people who peddle in power (especially behind the scenes) this is definitely a book worth checking out!