Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

Global affairs today is a world of baffling questions. Why can't world leaders draft a climate accord, even in the face of peak oil? How do tyrants hold onto power for so long? Who really holds the reins of power in Iran?

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita can share with you the crucial insights for understanding these and many others of today's most challenging issues. And if that claim seems far-fetched, perhaps you'll be convinced by the amazing power his theories give him to predict world events.

Over his long tenure as a professor and political consultant, Bruce has conferred with experts on all the world's most pressing issues and fed their knowledge into a vast and highly sophisticated computer model of global affairs. This combination of wide-ranging expertise and high-power analytics allows him to make strikingly accurate predictions of world events and speak with authority on the power dynamics of everything from office politics to international summits.

Bruce has advised the State Department, the CIA, and the Defense Department on US foreign policy and national security. As a corporate consultant, he has guided Fortune 500 companies through mergers and acquisitions. His uncannily accurate predictions about high-tension situations like those in Iran and Pakistan have gained him attention from the New York Times and other media: the Far Eastern Economics Review and the British Journal of Political Science agree with the CIA that Bruce's accuracy rate is an astonishing 90 percent.

In 2009, Bruce shared his vision of game theory and power politics in a book called "The Predictioneer's Game: Using the Logic of Brazen Self-Interest to See and Shape the Future." Now, in his new book, "The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics," he lays out a provocative and pragmatic explanation of how leaders get, keep, and eventually lose power. Hearing Bruce explain these works is captivating: his analyses of self-interest present a lens on history were sure you aren't used to, his predictions are highly intriguing, and his unflinching and wittily ironic style will delight you as he takes you from Caesars to CEOs on a tour of statesmanship.

Bruce teaches us that to change the world, we have to be willing to see it the way it is, not how we wish it were. The picture isn't always pretty, but it is always fascinating -- and Bruce can show it to you now.