Books of the Year, Part 5: Are you a psychopath?

I do read more than comic books, you know. In fact, one of my favorite books of 2011 was Jon Ronson's "The Psychopath Test," a funny, scary, fascinating look at madness in the modern world.

I love the way Ronson attacks a topic. He starts out with a question he wants to answer or an idea he wants to explore -- in this case, a strange puzzle in the form of a book that was being sent to the world's top neurologists -- and he lets the knowledge he uncovers lead him wherever it will. In "The Psychopath Test," that journey ranges from L. Ron Hubbard's old manor house to England's notorious Broadmoor psychiatric hospital to the lavish living room of "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap. All those destinations -- and many, many more -- are linked by the idea of madness, specifically psychopathy, specifically the various variations of psychopathy: which ones are dangerous, which ones are "useful" and which ones are walking past us every day on the street.

Like Ronson's other books, "The Psychopath Test" is constantly surprising, with some new astonishing fact or person arriving with every turn of the page. (Wait 'til you meet ex-spy David Shayler.) The last thing I want to do is spoil any of those surprises, so all I'm going to say is you need to read this book.

OK, I'll add one more thing: I enjoyed "The Psychopath Test" so much that as soon as I was done with it, I re-read Ronson's other two books, "Them: Adventures with Extremists" and "The Men Who Stare at Goats." You really need to read those two, too.