From New York to the Middle East and from the UN building to the Hotel Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh, Giuliano da Empoli takes the reader on a series of incursions into territories where power is based on showmanship, the calculated use of information, and the ability to generate continual shock waves. The predators have figured out how to exploit the new world order, and chaos is their natural environment. With the subtle pleasure of the polemicist and the lucidity of the anthropologist, da Empoli treats us to withering portraits of contemporary leaders, from Trump to Muhammad bin Salman, and delivers a dire analysis of the political moment.

Giuliano da Empoli grew up in several European countries, graduated with a law degree from the Sapienza University in Rome, and obtained a Master’s in political science at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, where he lives and works, teaching at Sciences Po. He has been an advisor to Antonio Maccanico at the Ministry of Communications and, later, director of the contemporary art archives at the Venice Biennale. In 2016, he founded the think tank Volta, which is active in Italy and Europe and is a member of the Global Progress Network. Starting in 1996, he has contributed regularly to several Italian newspapers such as il Corriere della Sera, la Repubblica, Il Sole 24 ore, and Il Riformista. For Radio 24, he conducted the program Sua Eccellenza and has appeared frequently on national television networks as an author and opinionist. Da Empoli wrote his first book at age twenty-two, Un grande futuro dietro di noi. Since then, he has written many more books analyzing social mobility, social evolution and change, and the impact of the new economy and its social and political consequences. In 2019, he penned Gli ingegneri del caos (Marsilio). Three years later, he made his debut as a novelist with Il mago del Cremlino (Mondadori), which was adapted for the screen this year by filmmaker Olivier Assayas and bowed at the Venice Film Festival.