“Amazing stories . . . Intimate portraits of how [these five ruthless leaders] were at home and at the table.” —Lulu Garcia-Navarro, NPR’s Weekend Editi

What did dictators eat? Sometimes simply obscene amounts of the best their nations could offer, but more often their humble origins, or embarrassing medical con

Explains how dictatorships rise, survive, and fall, along with why some but not all dictators wield vast powers.

In a world of rising tensions between Russia and the United States, the Middle East and Europe, Sunnis and Shiites, Islamism and liberalism, Turkey is at the ep

Explains the theory of political survival, particularly in cases of dictators and despotic governments, arguing that political leaders seek to stay in power usi