IAIN DALE: THE LATEST COLLECTION OF ESSAYS

Popular comments on Iain Dale: "Fascinating and enlightening. A lesson in history through a groundbreaking approach." "Reading this book is enjoyable. It's easy to stop and continue and each chapter is well-articulated." "Illuminating yet balanced."

Were the signs that Putin is a tough dictator always there? How should we deal with President Xi of China? As the world increasingly shifts towards authoritarianism, it is the right time to seek warnings and lessons from history.

In The Dictators, Iain Dale brings together 64 essays from historians, academics, journalists, and politicians about elected and unelected dictators, dictators in times of war and peace, those driven by ideology and those known for their brutal violence. How did these tyrants, autonomous and despotic personalities seize power - and how did they exercise it? And how did they lose it? Very few dictators die peacefully in their beds, after all.

Only by examining these figures from the 6th century BC to today, from ancient Greece to modern Saudi Arabia, do patterns begin to emerge. We can see the common characteristics, the shared conditions, the patterns of behavior that have allowed dictators to seize power - again and again.

The Dictators is extremely relevant to global politics today: it is indeed a warning from history. Will we heed it? Or will history teach us that history teaches us nothing?

Pages: 624, Year of Publication: 1210, Dimensions: 16x16cm