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Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present
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20/99
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87/99
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About This Book
Ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of resources and corroding or destroying democracy. Their mutual-admiration club also draws on models from the past. Vladimir Putin rehabilitates Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin, Donald Trump praises Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi, Jair Bolsonaro admires Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan invokes Adolf Hitler as the model of an efficient leader. Ruth Ben-Ghiat covers a century of authoritarianism to explain why strongman rulers in Africa, Europe, and Latin America, drawing from a common playbook of machismo, propaganda, violence, and corruption, have found popular support even as they bring ruin to their countries. The fruit of decades of research, Strongmen gives readers insight into how such rulers think, who and what they depend on, and how they can be opposed.
Reviews
"The playbook only takes the would-be strongman so far, and it only takes the historian so far in the quest to understand them and their significance."
"[Ben-Ghiat] provide[s] powerful evidence against these views ..."
"The author is on firmer ground when she shows how male leaders use 'divide-and-rule' and other tactics to consolidate power ..."
"It's a persuasive case, though the decision to leave leftist strongmen largely out of her study leaves Ben-Ghiat open to charges of political bias."
"Readers might expect that a book such as this would be a compendium of murder, mayhem, malfeasance, and misanthropic behavior, and they will not be disappointed in the fast-moving pages of this volume."
"A sober book, and one that we should all take seriously."
"Berlusconi may have been sleazy, manipulative and corrupt, but he didn't murder political opponents or support terrorism abroad, and he stepped down after losing an election...Wouldn't it be nice to know why coups have largely vanished?"
"This is not, however, merely another addition to the annals of Trumpology."
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