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The Desktop Digest of Despots and Dictators: An A to Z of Tyranny

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The Desktop Digest of Dictators and Despots is a compendium and quick reference guide to history’s most notorious absolutist rulers and authoritarian regimes. In a handsome hardcover format, this handy encyclopedia of totalitarians is as informative as it is titillating, a lurid panorama of history’s most malignant autarchs with original full-color portraits and accompanying psychobiographical profiles. From pharaohs to ayatollahs, from Caesar to Hitler, here are fifty-three profiles of history’s most warped personalities and their shocking crimes.  
The horrifying pageant of tyranny has trailed in its wake a vicious train of exploitation, intolerance and oppression—war, conquest, subjugation, slavery, imprisonment, torture and execution—which continues unabated to the present day. Dictators never disappoint when it comes to proving that absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is the perfect handbook for educators, armchair historians, and pop-culture pundits.  

224 pages, Hardcover

First published October 6, 2012

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Gilbert Alter-Gilbert

13 books2 followers

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Profile Image for Steve H.
447 reviews3 followers
March 23, 2013
Poorly edited, repetitive, anecdotal and ill-supported stories of selected dictators. Short snippets might be appropriate for popular, somewhat baseless bathroom reading.
Profile Image for Lost Owl.
Author 5 books6 followers
April 24, 2016
Numerous mistakes of history. Artwork that can't decide if it wants to be a cartoon.
Profile Image for Henk Wester.
Author 10 books26 followers
January 20, 2020
As an entertainment book it passes due to only mentioning terse notorious/evil/shocking deeds/character traits of the people it covers which gives the the book a rather "pulpy" vibe set out to amuse rather than inform.

Thus, as historical reference book it fails due its informal, sometimes humoristic approach and lack of important detail supposed to cover the subject matter in an "encyclopedia" type book .

Also, geat artwork.
Profile Image for Parveen.
23 reviews
March 22, 2020
It's not entirely accurate. It serves more to entertain than to inform. Quite a number of typos as well.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews

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