From the publishers announcement:
What would the world be like if the ruling elite were insane? This isn't a question for science fiction but a matter for social scientists. The most powerful class of institution on earth, the corporation, is by any reasonable measure hopelessly and irrevocably demented. The corporation lies, steals and kills without remorse or hesitation when it serves the interests of its shareholders to do so. Corporate social responsibility is a contradiction in terms.
As incisive as Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, as rigorous as Joseph Stiglitz's Globalization and its Discontents, Joel Bakan's new book is a revolutionary analysis of the corporation as an artificial person, programmed by law to operate in ways that in a human would be clearly psychopathic. And, since the corporation has claimed rights once reserved for human beings, Bakan argues that it is time for us to decide whether we are happy to put our trust in a system in which the lunatics have not only taken over the asylum but also own it lock, stock and barrel.