From the Samuel Johnson prize-winning author of Mao's Great Famine, a timely and compelling exploration of the cult of personality that surrounded eight twentieth century dictators
Frank Dikötter is Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. His books have changed the way historians view China, from the classic The Discourse of Race in Modern China to his award-winning People's Trilogy documenting the lives of ordinary people under Mao. He is married and lives in Hong Kong.
Essential reading … The standalone portraits of his eight dictators
are riveting
*Evening Standard, 'Book of the Week'*
How to be a dictator? Ruthlessness matters a lot more than talent,
but luck most of all. That is the upshot of Frank Dikötter’s
elegant and readable study of the cult of personality in the 20th
century … [Dikötter’s] penmanship and eye for anecdote brings [the
dictators] to life
*The Times*
A brilliant study of twentieth-century dictatorship … The book’s
psychological insight is devastating, the stories are eye-popping …
Essential reading for any student of political manipulation, as a
study of man’s inhumanity to man, it’s almost unbearably moving
*New Statesman, Books of the Year*
A disturbing emblem of our times
*Evening Standard, 'Best Books to Take on Holiday'*
A whistlestop tour of some of the most infamous leaders of the 20th
century … What Dikötter does so well is to find the pathological
and ideological connections among leaders who “teetered between
hubris and paranoia”
*Observer*
Frank Dikötter provides a timely reminder of just how destructive
toxic insecurity, and its corollary, pathological narcissism, can
become … In terms of the dynamics of narcissistic authoritarianism,
there is much in How to Be a Dictator that is of critical
contemporary relevance … History only makes sense if we understand
the psychological pathology that underlies it, and our own
propensity for partaking in such pathology. We need a clear-eyed
understanding of history as a recurring series of monumental
follies, led by cretins who duped or forced millions of us into
humiliating childish submission. Only then can we hope to avoid the
repetition. Dikötter is in the vanguard of historians opening our
eyes to this fundamental truth
*Irish Times*
Enlightening and a good read
*Spectator*
A heroic piece of research … Devastating in every sense of the
word
*Economist*
Ground-breaking … Unsparing in its detail, relentless in its
research, unforgiving in its judgements … Dikötter’s achievement in
this book is remarkable
*Sunday Times*
Worryingly close to home … Dikötter has put together sharp
portraits of Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il-sung, Duvalier,
Ceausescu and Mengistu
*Times Higher Education*
How to Be a Dictator is a timely book and enjoyable to read. It is
strangely comforting to be reminded that many of the dictators in
Dikötter’s book came to an ignominious end. But that is no excuse
for underestimating the need to protect democracy today
*Financial Times*
Definitive and harrowing
*Daily Mail*
Dikötter never allows his intense account to degenerate into
melodrama … Fascinating
*Daily Telegraph*
Magnificent ... The author gives full acknowledgement to memoirs
and scholarly works but it is his own archival research, allied to
a piercing critique, that lifts the book to a higher level. He has
mastered the details so well that with the most sparing use of
description he weaves a vivid tapestry of China at the time
…Brilliant
*Sunday Times*
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