It's not just the bully in the schoolyard that we should be worried about. The one-on-one bullying that dominates the national conversation, this timely book suggests, is actually part of a larger problem--a natural outcome of the bullying nature of our national institutions. And as long as the United States embraces militarism and aggressive capitalism, systemic bullying and all its impacts--at home and abroad--will persist as a major crisis.

Bullying looks very similar on the personal and institutional levels: it involves an imbalance of power and behavior that consistently undermines...