Talk of the Devil

Riccardo Orizio

"So much has been said to about the Tontons Macoute. So many lies told to discredit them. [But] if the people had a problem they were the ones who solved it. If a family was destitute, the Tontons Macoute gave them money. If a mother needed funds to send her child to school, she turned to them. If a man was undemployed, he turned to them. They acted as mediators in the absence of institutions. I call them... artisans of the social revolution." (Full Review)

In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz

Michela Wrong

A few years ago Desmond Tutu described Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe as embodying all that was bad about African leaders. He may have had a point. But when it comes to theft and corruption in Africa there was, and will only ever be, one master...Zaire's Mobuto Sese Seko. (Full Review)

The Commissar Vanishes

David King

This magnificent volume of pictures doctored, airbrushed and butchered during the grim years of Stalin's rule in the Soviet Union is a true labour of love by David King. A Professor resident in Princeton, Dr King has spent years trawling through both state and private archives in the former USSR to try to get to the bottom of the cult of personality around Stalin that was so intense there could be no other competition for the people's affection. (Full Review)

Thank God They're on Our Side

David Schmitz

This work reads more like a reference book than a narrative. It has at its heart a very detailed polemic against the preferred foreign policy of the United States government throughout the 20th century. (Full Review)

A Nation of Enemies

Pamela Constable, Arturo Valenzuela

That rarest of beasts - a book about the Chilean revolution and its aftermath that is tainted with neither right or left wing vitriol. Pamela Constable & Arturo Valenzuela have managed to come up with a remarkable balanced account of the years from late 1972 when Chilean and CIA plotters schemed to rid the nation of the Marxist President... (Full Review)

The Trial of Henry Kissinger

Christopher Hitchens

At first glance not the sort of thing you would expect to find reviewed on thedictatorship.com however with his furious attack on Kissinger Vanity Fair journalist Christopher Hitchens reveals a fascinating insight into some of the murkier politicking of the last 30 years. (Full Review)

The Private Life of Chairman Mao

Zhisui Li

Epic. Is perhaps the only way to describe a biography written over the course of thirty years. Doctor Li became Mao Tse Tung's personal doctor in 1954 and was with him to the very end, even performing the autopsy on the titan of Communism in 1976. (Full Review)

America's Boy

James Hamilton-Paterson

OK. Spot quiz. Whaddya know about Ferdinand Marcos? Well, you'd most likely answer, he was President of the Philippines for a while during the 70s and 80s; he is in the running for the most corrupt man of the 20th century; he liked a little bit of martial law now and again and, oh he was maried to that woman with the show fetish. (Full Review)