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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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The Sunday Times bestseller 'One of the strongest and most affecting works in Allende's long career' New York Times Book Review 'A defiantly warm and funny novel, by somebody who has earned the right to argue that love and optimism can survive whatever history might throw at us' ...Daily Telegraph September 3, 1939, the day of the Spanish exiles' splendid arrival in Chile, the Second World War broke out in Europe. Victor Dalmau is a young doctor when he is caught up in the Spanish Civil War, a tragedy that leaves his life - and the fate of his country - forever changed. Together with his sister-in-law, the pianist Roser, he is forced out of his beloved Barcelona and into exile. When opportunity to seek refuge arises, they board a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda to Chile, the promised 'long petal of sea and wine and snow'. There, they find themselves enmeshed in a rich web of characters who come together in love and tragedy over the course of four generations, destined to witness the battle between freedom and repression as it plays out across the world. A masterful work of historical fiction that soars from the Spanish Civil War to the rise and fall of Pinochet, A Long Petal of the Sea is Isabel Allende at the height of her powers. 'An epic that starts in 1939 and spans decades and continents . . . A masterful work of historical fiction about hope, exile and belonging, and one that sheds light on the way we live now' Independent.co.uk 'Full of ambition and humanity' Sunday Times 'Allende knows that all stories are love stories, and the greatest love stories are told by time' Colum McCann 'Allende's style is impressively Olympian and the payoff is remarkable' Guardian 'Epic in scope, yet intimate in execution' i
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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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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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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 Grant, Will
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- RRP: $42.99
- $32.24
- Save $10.75
- Pub Date
7 Apr 21
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An exploration of the phenomenon of the caudillo figure in Latin American politics and the rise of populism through the modern histories of the continent.
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By Pak, Jung H.
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- RRP: $42.99
- $32.24
- Save $10.75
- Pub Date
1 Jun 21
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The first book from a former intelligence community insider
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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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By Gessen, Masha
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- RRP: $32.99
- $25.73
- Save $7.26
- In Stock At Publisher
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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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