My Favourite Dictators

Author: Chris Mikul
Publisher: SCB Distributors
ISBN: 1909394718
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
“I’m personally against seeing my pictures and statues in the streets, but it’s what the people want.” — Saparmurat Niyazov, dictator of Turkmenistan Dictators may be among the worst people in history, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t laugh at them. In My Favourite Dictators, Chris Mikul tells the stories of eleven of the twentieth century’s most colourful and reviled human beings, including Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong, Muammar Gaddafi, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il. In each case, he examines the political backgrounds to their rise to power and eventual downfall, but the focus here is on the personalities, peculiarities and private lives of these very strange men. You’ll be amazed and appalled by their effortless cruelties, voracious sexual appetites, absurd personality cults, ostentatious uniforms, promotion of dreadful art and pretensions to being great writers – not to mention their terrible taste in interior decoration.

Dictators' Dinners

Author: Victoria Clark
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781908531780
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
What did dictators eat? Sometimes simply obscene amounts of the best their nations could offer, but more often their humble origins, or embarrassing medical conditions, or simple lack of interest in food meant their tastes were unpretentious--ranging from human flesh, to raw garlic salad, to Quality Street. Here we learn of their foibles, their eccentricities and their frequent terror of poisoning--something no number of food tasters was ever able to assuage. For a selection of 25 former national figureheads across the world, each section comprises an outline of the dictator's history, a short essay on their particular eating habits, table manners, digestive systems etc. and one or two of their favorite recipes.

Defeating Dictators

Author: George B. N. Ayittey
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0230341098
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 395

Book Description
Despite billions of dollars of aid and the best efforts of the international community to improve economies and bolster democracy across Africa, violent dictatorships persist. As a result, millions have died, economies are in shambles, and whole states are on the brink of collapse. Political observers and policymakers are starting to believe that economic aid is not the key to saving Africa. So what does the continent need to do to throw off the shackles of militant rule? African policy expert George Ayittey argues that before Africa can prosper, she must be free. Taking a hard look at the fight against dictatorships around the world, from Ukraine's orange revolution in 2004 to Iran's Green Revolution last year, he examines what strategies worked in the struggle to establish democracy through revolution. Ayittey also offers strategies for the West to help Africa in her quest for freedom, including smarter sanctions and establishing fellowships for African students.

Dictator Style

Author: Peter York
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 9780811853149
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Book Description
Originally published: Great Britain: Atlantic Books, 2005.

Mussolini's Italy

Author: R. J. B. Bosworth
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110107857X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 740

Book Description
With Mussolini ’s Italy, R.J.B. Bosworth—the foremost scholar on the subject writing in English—vividly brings to life the period in which Italians participated in one of the twentieth century’s most notorious political experiments. Il Duce’s Fascists were the original totalitarians, espousing a cult of violence and obedience that inspired many other dictatorships, Hitler’s first among them. But as Bosworth reveals, many Italians resisted its ideology, finding ways, ingenious and varied, to keep Fascism from taking hold as deeply as it did in Germany. A sweeping chronicle of struggle in terrible times, this is the definitive account of Italy’s darkest hour.

How to Feed a Dictator

Author: Witold Szablowski
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101993391
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
“Amazing stories . . . Intimate portraits of how [these five ruthless leaders] were at home and at the table.” —Lulu Garcia-Navarro, NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday Anthony Bourdain meets Kapuściński in this chilling look from within the kitchen at the appetites of five of the twentieth century's most infamous dictators, by the acclaimed author of Dancing Bears and What’s Cooking in the Kremlin What was Pol Pot eating while two million Cambodians were dying of hunger? Did Idi Amin really eat human flesh? And why was Fidel Castro obsessed with one particular cow? Traveling across four continents, from the ruins of Iraq to the savannahs of Kenya, Witold Szabłowski tracked down the personal chefs of five dictators known for the oppression and massacre of their own citizens—Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Uganda’s Idi Amin, Albania’s Enver Hoxha, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and Cambodia’s Pol Pot—and listened to their stories over sweet-and-sour soup, goat-meat pilaf, bottles of rum, and games of gin rummy. Dishy, deliciously readable, and dead serious, How to Feed a Dictator provides a knife’s-edge view of life under tyranny.

The Dictatorship Syndrome

Author: Alaa Al Aswany
Publisher: Haus Publishing
ISBN: 1912208601
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 153

Book Description
The study of dictatorship in the West has acquired an almost exotic dimension. But authoritarian regimes remain a painful reality for billions of people worldwide who still live under them, their freedoms violated and their rights abused. They are subject to arbitrary arrest, torture, corruption, ignorance, and injustice. What is the nature of dictatorship? How does it take hold? In what conditions and circumstances is it permitted to thrive? And how do dictators retain power, even when reviled and mocked by those they govern? In this deeply considered and at times provocative short work, Alaa Al Aswany tells us that, as with any disease, to understand the syndrome of dictatorship we must first consider the circumstances of its emergence, along with the symptoms and complications it causes in both the people and the dictator.

The Dictator's Handbook

Author: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
Publisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 161039044X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
Explains the theory of political survival, particularly in cases of dictators and despotic governments, arguing that political leaders seek to stay in power using any means necessary, most commonly by attending to the interests of certain coalitions.

Dictator

Author: Robert Harris
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0099474190
Category : Historical fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 546

Book Description
'Confirms Harris's undisputed place as our leading master of both the historical and contemporary thriller' Daily Mail There was a time when Cicero held Caesar's life in the palm of his hand. But now Caesar is the dominant figure and Cicero's life is in ruins. Cicero's comeback requires wit, skill and courage. And for a brief and glorious period, the legendary orator is once more the supreme senator in Rome. But politics is never static. And no statesman, however cunning, can safeguard against the ambition and corruption of others. 'The finest fictional treatment of Ancient Rome in the English language' Scotsman

Dictators' Homes

Author: Peter York
Publisher: Atlantic
ISBN: 9781843545576
Category : Dictators
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Book Description
If our homes are an extension of our personalities then the interiors in Dictators' Homes provide evidence to substantiate the theory that these men and women were the world's most terrifying rulers. Featuring rare, jaw-dropping photographs of interiors that are now mostly (thankfully) destroyed, Peter York places each lair in its historical context leaving no tiger pelt unturned. From Saddam Hussein's private artwork and General Noriega's Christmas tree to the alarming tube and knob contraption in Ceausescu's en-suite bathroom no design detail is unexamined. The worlds' most famous Dictators are here. From Mussolini and Mobutu via Idi Amin, Lenin and Tito this book ensures that Dictators' crimes against good taste will no longer go unpunished.