Genres

Dictatorship

Lists

The Librarian of Basra by Jeanette Winter

How I Learned Geography by Uri Shulevitz

Picture Books About Times of War

226 books — 45 voters

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

The Spanish Civil War (fiction and nonfiction)

173 books — 123 voters

Authoritarian Drift in the United States by G. Scott Graham

Democracy In Deficit by James M. Buchanan

To Not Die Of Politics

10 books — 8 voters

Behold the Wanderer by Mathijs Koenraadt

The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. Hayek

Autocratic Rule and Centralization

74 books — 19 voters

The Nazi, the Princess, and the Shoemaker by Scott M. Neuman

The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans

The Pharmacist of Auschwitz by Patricia Posner

Nazi Germany Non fiction

29 books — 14 voters

In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick

The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship by Phillip Darrell Collins

By Far The Best Kind Of "Ship" Is Arbitrary

403 books — 17 voters

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Genre Report: What’s Going On in the World(s) of Romantasy This Year

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“ SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and th SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again. Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's face And the international wrong. Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone. From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; 'I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work,' And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the dead, Who can speak for the dumb? All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. Defenseless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame. ...more ”
― W.H. Auden, Another Time

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“ One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. ”
― George Orwell, 1984

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