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Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, Ceausescu, Mengistu of Ethiopia and Duvalier of Haiti. No dictator can rule through fear and violence alone. Naked power can be grabbed and held temporarily, but it never suffices in the long term. A tyrant who can compel his ow...n people to acclaim him will last longer. The paradox of the modern dictator is that he must create the illusion of popular support. Throughout the twentieth century, hundreds of millions of people were condemned to enthusiasm, obliged to hail their leaders even as they were herded down the road to serfdom. In How to Be a Dictator, Frank Dikoetter returns to eight of the most chillingly effective personality cults of the twentieth century. From carefully choreographed parades to the deliberate cultivation of a shroud of mystery through iron censorship, these dictators ceaselessly worked on their own image and encouraged the population at large to glorify them. At a time when democracy is in retreat, are we seeing a revival of the same techniques among some of today's world leaders? This timely study, told with great narrative verve, examines how a cult takes hold, grows, and sustains itself. It places the cult of personality where it belongs, at the very heart of tyranny.
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Ours is the age of the strongman. Russia, India, Turkey and America are ruled by men who, as they have risen to the top, have reshaped their countries around them, creating cults of personality which earn the loyalty of millions. And as they do so, they draw on a playbook of beha...viour established by figures such as Benito Mussolini, Muammar Gaddafi and Adolf Hitler. Here, political historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat draws on analysis of everything from gender and sexuality to diplomatic strategy to explain who these political figures are - and how they manipulate our own history, fears and desires in search of power at any cost.
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The chant of 'Azadi!' - Urdu for 'Freedom!' - is the slogan of those oppressed by the ongoing and violent conflict in Kashmir. Ironically it has also become the chant of millions on the streets of India under the banner of Hindu Nationalism. What lies between these two calls for ...freedom? A chasm or a bridge? In this series of penetrating essays on politics and literature, Arundhati Roy examines this question, challenging us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism. Azadi, she warns, hangs in the balance for us all.
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A portrait of Robert Mugabe, a man whose once brilliant career has ruined Zimbabwe and cast shame on the African continent. It charts Mugabe's gradual self-destruction, and uncovers some of the most respectable international players in the Zimbabwe tragedy.
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Features two political scientists who show how the rules of politics almost always favour leaders who ignore the national interest and focus on serving their own supporters. In this book, the authors reveal their simple, crucial conclusion: leaders will do whatever it takes to st...ay in power.
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Journalist, campaigner and podcast co-host with Owen Jones, Ellie Mae O'Hagan has emerged as one of the smartest observers of contemporary politics, and in The New Normal provides a brilliant and incisive analysis of the current political watershed we face.
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By Gessen, Masha
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- RRP: $32.99
- $29.03
- Save $3.96
- Internationally sourced
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The only book you need to read to understand the events of the past four years in Trump's America, from the prize-winning Russian-American New Yorker writer.
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All these years later and nothing had changed. Young men left and they came back broken or not at all. It is 1945 in Heidenfeld, Germany, and Etta's sons are gone. At fifteen, Georg is away training at a school for the Hitler Youth. Max, nineteen and fearless, is about to come ho...me from the Eastern front a changed man. And then there's Etta's husband, Josef, determined to do everything for his country - no matter the cost. The Vanishing Sky is a Second World War novel seen through German eyes, a story of the irreparable damage of war on the home front, and one family's participation - involuntary, unseen or direct - in a dangerous regime. Drawing inspiration from her own father's time in the Hitler Youth, L. Annette Binder has crafted a spellbinding novel about the daring choices we make for country and for family.
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All these years later and nothing had changed. Young men left and they came back broken or not at all. It is 1945 in Heidenfeld, Germany, and Etta's sons are gone. At fifteen, Georg is away training at a school for the Hitler Youth. Max, nineteen and fearless, is about to come ho...me from the Eastern front a changed man. And then there's Etta's husband, Josef, determined to do everything for his country - no matter the cost. The Vanishing Sky is a Second World War novel seen through German eyes, a story of the irreparable damage of war on the home front, and one family's participation - involuntary, unseen or direct - in a dangerous regime. Drawing inspiration from her own father's time in the Hitler Youth, L. Annette Binder has crafted a spellbinding novel about the daring choices we make for country and for family.
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For a time after the end of Communism, intellectuals and politicians across Europe and America celebrated a great achievement, a common progressive purpose and, very often, personal friendships. The euphoria quickly evaporated, the common purpose and centre ground gradually disap...peared and eventually - as this book compellingly relates - the relationships which went with it completely soured. Anne Applebaum traces a familiar history in an unfamiliar way, looking at the trajectories of individuals caught up in the public events of the last three decades. When politics polarises, and authoritarians start to make the running, which side do you back? If you are a journalist, an intellectual, a civic leader, do you swallow what they are feeding you? When they appropriate history, or pedal conspiracies, or eviscerate the media and the judiciary, do you go along with it? Twilight of Democracy is a new kind of political writing, which shows how the personal and the political are inextricably mixed, and brings a fresh understanding to the dynamics of public life in Europe and America, both in recent decades and now.
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