REVIEW: Hail, beloved fearless leaders!

In the opening passage of his latest book, How to be a Dictator, Dutch historian Frank Dikötter quotes British novelist William Thackeray’s caption of a satirical engraving depicting the Sun King Louis XIV in his unadorned, sickly body. “Thus do barbers and cobblers make the gods that we worship.” Dikötter’s book is the verbal equivalent of […]