Thieves of State " Thieves of State " is about a particular form of society - sadly perhaps the most common form of society - a kleptocracy. "Thieves" goes into a lot of detail about how individuals are drawn into (assimilated into) this form of society ("dragon"). The examples allow us to drill down to get a close-up view of how assimilation takes place, how it is almost inevitable and why it is so difficult to resist. It's hard to find an example of a social form that doesn't feature a "strongman" (usually but not always male) with built-in mechanisms that draw group resources to the strongman and his immediate family. This is as true of a Canadian "first nation" as it is of the Trump administration in the USA. Chayes describes how this phenomenon permeates the whole society in a kind of fractal structure, with layer upon layer of mini-strongmen paying up to the strongmen above them while extracting resources from humans below...