The Little Book of Loony Dictators

The Little Book of Loony Dictators

• The Equatorial Guinean president Macias Nguema once initiated a cabinet reshuffle by clubbing his foreign minister to death.
• Idi Amin entertained his fellow African presidents by demonstrating how to suffocate someone with a handkerchief.
• In 1956 Chairman Mao’s Sports Minister recognized a new track-and-field event, the hand-grenade throw.
• Adolf Hitler tried to cure his chronic flatulence by drinking machine-gun oil.
• In a single day in December 1938 ’Uncle Joe’ Stalin signed 3,182 death warrants.

The Little Book of Loony Dictators charts the grisly, fantastic, unbelievable abuses of power of the world’s most deranged dictators, from Chairman Mao banning The Sound of Music as ＂a blatant example of capitalist pornography＂ to Papa Doc Duvalier rewriting the Lord’s Prayer for blanket use in Haitian Schools (＂Our Doc, who art in the National Palace for life...＂