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A review by katykelly
How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century by Frank Dikötter
3.0
Read to Kim/North Korea.
While I found this rather interesting, it really did just feel like a book of repeating facts on each historical figure. No commentary, opinion or insight was offered. Bare facts of each dictatorial system (though the parallels were frightening and obvious) were given.
It was a rather dry read and on coming to the final three, none of whom I know anything about, I couldn’t make myself continue.
Glad I now know more about the first few ‘world leaders’, but it wasn’t an easy read, took weeks instead of days to get that far for me, the style just didn’t sit well with me, even though the content and facts themselves were (and should be) fascinating and widely-studied.
With thanks to Netgalley for the sample reading copy.
While I found this rather interesting, it really did just feel like a book of repeating facts on each historical figure. No commentary, opinion or insight was offered. Bare facts of each dictatorial system (though the parallels were frightening and obvious) were given.
It was a rather dry read and on coming to the final three, none of whom I know anything about, I couldn’t make myself continue.
Glad I now know more about the first few ‘world leaders’, but it wasn’t an easy read, took weeks instead of days to get that far for me, the style just didn’t sit well with me, even though the content and facts themselves were (and should be) fascinating and widely-studied.
With thanks to Netgalley for the sample reading copy.