THE HISTORY OF THE STRONGMAN can make for difficult reading. These rulers promise a bright national future, but the emotions they elicit are bleak. The line between everyday life and horror in their states can be razor-thin. Amin entertained diplomats at Kampala’s swanky Nile Hotel, enjoying the knowledge that his security forces were beating dissidents in the basement. Pinochet’s military made some leftists watch the torture of people they knew on a blue-lit “stage.” Gaddafi had a “Department of Protocol” to procure his sexual captives. As the philosopher Hannah Arendt argued, authoritarian
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