Shadow of the Dictators

Shadow of the Dictators
Author: Time-Life Books
Publisher: Time Life Medical
Total Pages: 184
Release: 1989
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780809464838

Describes the history of dictators during the modern 20th century.

The Dictator's Shadow

The Dictator's Shadow
Author: Heraldo Munoz
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2008-09-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786726040

Augusto Pinochet was the most important Third World dictator of the Cold War, and perhaps the most ruthless. In The Dictator's Shadow, United Nations Ambassador Heraldo Munoz takes advantage of his unmatched set of perspectives -- as a former revolutionary who fought the Pinochet regime, as a respected scholar, and as a diplomat -- to tell what this extraordinary figure meant to Chile, the United States, and the world. Pinochet's American backers saw his regime as a bulwark against Communism; his nation was a testing ground for U.S.-inspired economic theories. Countries desiring World Bank support were told to emulate Pinochet's free-market policies, and Chile's government pension even inspired President George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security. The other baggage -- the assassinations, tortures, people thrown out of airplanes, mass murders of political prisoners -- was simply the price to be paid for building a modern state. But the questions raised by Pinochet's rule still remain: Are such dictators somehow necessary? Horrifying but also inspiring, The Dictator's Shadow is a unique tale of how geopolitical rivalries can profoundly affect everyday life.

Defeating Dictators

Defeating Dictators
Author: George B. N. Ayittey
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2011-11-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0230341098

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.

The Dictators

The Dictators
Author: R. J. Overy
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 932
Release: 2004
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780393020304

Overy gives readers an absorbing study of Hitler and Stalin, ranging from their private and public selves, their ascents to power and consolidation of absolute rule, to their waging of massive war and creation of far-flung empires of camps and prisons.

In the Shadow of the Dictators

In the Shadow of the Dictators
Author: Paul Corthorn
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2006-08-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0857713523

Paul Corthorn presents an illuminating, in-depth study of the British Left's response to the rise of international fascism in the 1930s. He uses a range of newly available archival sources to analyse how the Labour left - which took the form of the Socialist League between 1932 and 1937 - and the Independent Labour Party reacted to developments such as Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia, Franco's uprising in Spain and Hitler's drive for territorial expansion. He argues that their responses to these threats from the fascist dictators were shaped above all by their constantly changing views of another dictatorship: the Soviet Union under Stalin. 'an elegant piece of innovative research on the Labour left between 1932 and 1939' 'based on an impressive amount of research and on a perceptive and sensitive handling of the evidence collected' 'this elegantly written book fills a major gap in the existing literature' Professor E F Biagini, University of Cambridge

Strongman

Strongman
Author: Kenneth C. Davis
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2020-10-06
Genre: Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN: 1250205654

From the bestselling author of the Don’t Know Much About® books comes a dramatic account of the origins of democracy, the history of authoritarianism, and the reigns of five of history's deadliest dictators. A Washington Post Best Book of the Year!A Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year! A YALSA 2021 Nonfiction Award Nominee! What makes a country fall to a dictator? How do authoritarian leaders—strongmen—capable of killing millions acquire their power? How are they able to defeat the ideal of democracy? And what can we do to make sure it doesn’t happen again? By profiling five of the most notoriously ruthless dictators in history—Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Saddam Hussein—Kenneth C. Davis seeks to answer these questions, examining the forces in these strongmen’s personal lives and historical periods that shaped the leaders they’d become. Meticulously researched and complete with photographs, Strongman provides insight into the lives of five leaders who callously transformed the world and serves as an invaluable resource in an era when democracy itself seems in peril. * "A fascinating, highly readable portrayal of infamous men that provides urgent lessons for democracy now." —Publishers Weekly, starred review "Strongman is a book that is both deeply researched and deeply felt, both an alarming warning and a galvanizing call to action, both daunting and necessary to read and discuss." —Cynthia Levinson, author of Fault Lines in the Constitution

Sites of the Dictators

Sites of the Dictators
Author: Xosé M. Núñez Seixas
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2021-06-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000397025

This book explores the changing evolution of memory debates on places intimately linked to the lives and deaths of different fascist, para-fascist and communist dictators in a truly transnational and comparative way. During the second decade of the twenty-first century, a number of parallel debates arose in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Albania, Austria and other European countries regarding the public management by democratic regimes of those sites of memory that were directly linked to the personal biographies of their former dictators. The ways in which each democracy deals with the dead bodies, mausoleums and birthplaces of the dictators vary considerably, although common questions occur, such as whether oblivion or re-signification is better, the risk of a posthumous cult of personality being established and the extent to which the shadow of the authoritarian past endures in these sites of memory. Using the concept of "sites of the dictators", the author explains why it is so difficult to deal with some sites of memory linked to dead autocrats, as those places contribute directly or indirectly to humanizing them, making their remembrance more acceptable for the present and future generations, and discusses the potential of the "Europeanization" of these "dark" memories of the past. Exploring the imperatives of memory politics and how these are reconciled with local actors interested in exploiting the dictator’s remembrance, this book will be useful reading for students and scholars of history, politics and memory studies.

The Nature of War

The Nature of War
Author: Jim Stempel
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2014-11-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786490586

For over 12,000 years human beings have warred, slaughtering each other with persistence and brutality. From spear point to thermonuclear ordnance, human ingenuity has had a serious downside. In the 20th century alone, wars claimed more than 90 million lives. Yet war's origins, meaning, and evolution over the millennium remain to this day a mystery. Why is warfare "almost" as old as man himself? How is it that a creature capable of producing great art, architecture, literature, medicine, and wondrous acts of compassion is simultaneously capable of such cruel and wanton slaughter? To answer these and other questions, this thoughtful study journeys across time and disciplines to examine and sensibly explain human warfare, clarify its source and driving energy, and thoughtfully develop the prospect of a true and lasting peace.