About the Author

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is an internationally acclaimed historian, speaker, and political commentator for the Atlantic, CNN, the Washington Post, and other publications. She is a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University and lives in New York City.

Reviews

"A timely analysis of how a certain kind of charisma delivers political disaster."
*Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny*

"Everyone who cares about American democracy should read this book."
*Sarah Kendzior, author of Hiding in Plain Sight*

"What separates this book from the many others that examine tyrants and tyranny—is the analysis that puts this phenomenon in perspective."
*David M. Shribman - Boston Globe*

"Simultaneously intimate and sweeping in scope.…Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s clear prose rings with a rhythm and cadence that today’s nonfiction too often lacks."
*Sarah Chayes, author of On Corruption in America and Thieves of State*

"Ruth Ben-Ghiat…specializes in male menace."
*Jon Blitzer - The New Yorker*

"For the reader inured by the drip-drip-drip of stories of brazen corruption over the course of years, it is bracing to see a half-decade’s worth of reporting so carefully distilled.…Ben-Ghiat does not shy away from revealing America’s role in enabling dictatorships around the world.…It’s a chilling current through the book and one that pricks the conscience of a reader."
*Talia Lavin - Washington Post*

"Ruth Ben-Ghiat delivers a superb examination of how close the US came to fascism—and how it has propped it up before."
*Charles Kaiser - Guardian*

"Ben-Ghiat's portrayal of fascist-era tyrants, murderous Cold War dictators, and would-be tyrants in our own day gives us a gripping and illuminating picture of how strongmen have deployed violence, seduction, and corruption. History, she shows, offers clear lessons not only about how these regimes are built, but also how they must be opposed, and how they end."
*Daniel Ziblatt, co-author of How Democracies Die*

"A surpassingly brilliant public intellectual."
*Virginia Heffernan - Slate Trumpcast*

"Ben-Ghiat teaches us about the leaders.…[She] cogently states that the secret of the strongman is that he needs the crowds much more than they need him."
*Federico Finchelstein - New Republic*

"Rich in anecdote.…Ms. Ben-Ghiat is at her most persuasive when she writes of the importance of the strongman’s cult of personality."
*Tunku Varadarajan - Wall Street Journal*

"Deep insight and a vigorous style…[A] brilliant contribution to the political psychology of democracy."
*Joy Connolly, president of the American Council of Learned Societies*