rank Dikötter, author of the acclaimed People's Trilogy, focuses his latest book on the special role personality cults have played in eight eerily effective 20th-century dictatorships. The wryly titled How to Be a Dictator reminds readers of the depressingly similar tactics tyrants have used throughout history to destroy rivals and win acquiescence, if not exactly adulation, of the people.
A lot is covered in just over 270 pages, including some 70 pages of extensive bibliography, notes and engaging photos. Benito Mussolini, a forerunner in the dark arts of personality cults, opens the book, followed by narratives on Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong and Kim Il-sung. Less well known to many will be the dictatorships of Haiti's François Duvalier, Romania's Nicolae CeauÈ?escu and Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile Mariam that make up the last three chapters.
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