'A gripping and illuminating picture of how strongmen have deployed violence, seduction, and corruption' Daniel Ziblatt, co-author of How Democracies Die 'A timely analysis of how a certain kind of charisma delivers political disaster' Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny Ours is the age of the strongman. Countries from Russia to India, Turkey to America are ruled by men who combine populist appeal with authoritarian policy. They have reshaped their countries around them, creating cults of personality which earn the loyalty of millions. And they do so by drawing on a playbook of behaviour established by figures such as Benito Mussolini, Muammar Gaddafi and Adolf Hitler. So why - despite the evidence of history - do strongmen still hold such appeal for us? Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat draws on analysis of everything from gender to corruption and propaganda to explain who these political figures are - and how they manipulate our own history, fears and desires in search of power at any cost. Strongmen is a fierce and perceptive history, and a vital step in understanding how to combat the forces which seek to derail democracy and seize our rights.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is the expert on the "strongman" playbook employed by authoritarian demagogues from Mussolini to Putin-enabling her to predict with uncanny accuracy the recent experience in America and Europe. In Strongmen, she lays bare the blueprint these leaders have followed over the past 100 years, and empowers us to recognize, resist, and prevent their disastrous rule in the future. For ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of truth, treasure, and the protections of democracy. They promise law and order, then legitimize lawbreaking by financial, sexual, and other predators. They use masculinity as a symbol of strength and a political weapon. Taking what you want, and getting away with it, becomes proof of male authority. They use propaganda, corruption, and violence to stay in power. Vladimir Putin and Mobutu Sese Seko's kleptocracies, Augusto Pinochet's torture sites, Benito Mussolini and Muammar Gaddafi's systems of sexual exploitation, and Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump's relentless misinformation: all show how authoritarian rule, far from ensuring stability, is marked by destructive chaos. No other type of leader is so transparent about prioritizing self-interest over the public good. As one country after another has discovered, the strongman is at his worst when true guidance is most needed by his country. Recounting the acts of solidarity and dignity that have undone strongmen over the past 100 years, Ben-Ghiat makes vividly clear that only by seeing the strongman for what he is-and by valuing one another as he is unable to do-can we stop him, now and in the future.

The Italian nation-state has been defined by practices of mobility. Tourists have flowed in from the era of the Grand Tour to the present, and Italians flowed out in massive numbers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Italians made up the largest voluntary emigration in recorded world history. As a bridge from Africa to Europe, Italy has more recently been a destination of choice for immigrants whose tragic stories of shipwreck and confinement are often in the news. This first-of-its-kind edited volume offers a critical accounting of those histories and practices, shedding new light on modern Italy as a flashpoint for mobilities as they relate to nationalism, imperialism, globalization, and consumer, leisure, and labor practices. The book's eight essays reveal how a country often appreciated for what seems immutable - its classical and Renaissance patrimony - has in fact been shaped by movement and transit.

The Italian nation-state has been defined by practices of mobility. Tourists have flowed in from the era of the Grand Tour to the present, and Italians flowed out in massive numbers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Italians made up the largest voluntary emigration in recorded world history. As a bridge from Africa to Europe, Italy has more recently been a destination of choice for immigrants whose tragic stories of shipwreck and confinement are often in the news. This first-of-its-kind edited volume offers a critical accounting of those histories and practices, shedding new light on modern Italy as a flashpoint for mobilities as they relate to nationalism, imperialism, globalization, and consumer, leisure, and labor practices. The book's eight essays reveal how a country often appreciated for what seems immutable - its classical and Renaissance patrimony - has in fact been shaped by movement and transit.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat provides the first in-depth study of feature and documentary films produced under the auspices of Mussolini s government that took as their subjects or settings Italy s African and Balkan colonies. These "empire films" were Italy's entry into an international market for the exotic. The films engaged its most experienced and cosmopolitan directors (Augusto Genina, Mario Camerini) as well as new filmmakers (Roberto Rossellini) who would make their marks in the postwar years. Ben-Ghiat sees these films as the start of the aesthetic revolution that would lead to neo-realism. Shot in Libya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, these movies reinforced Fascist racial and labor policies and were largely forgotten after the war. Ben-Ghiat restores them to Italian and international film history in this gripping account of empire, war, and the cinema of dictatorship."

"Ruth Ben-Ghiat's Fascist Modernities: Italy 1922-1945 is among the very best analyses of Fascist culture in any language. Based on a truly amazing amount of research, this volume traces the first stirrings of a generation of Italian writers and film directors who would pass from Fascism through the Resistance to militancy in the Communist, Socialist, Action, and Christian Democratic parties and then beyond into the new Italy of the 'economic miracle.'"--Alexander De Grand, author of "Bottai e la cultura fascista

"A superb and original work of scholarship, Fascist Modernities give us a startling new picture of the Italian fascist period and its cultural politics, as well as remarkable new analyses of Italian fascist anti-Semitism and of the relation between Italy's colonial aspirations and conquests and its modernizing schemes. Most impressive of all, Ben-Ghiat single-handedly changes our understanding of the place of realism in Italian literary history and in twentieth-century cinema."--Barbara Spackman, author of "Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology and Social Fantasy in Italy

"Ruth Ben-Ghiat's book is an important contribution to the history of fascist culture, showing the complex ways in which fascism used intellectuals and intellectuals used fascism."--Alexander Stille, author of "Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian-Jewish Families Under Fascism

Ruth Ben-Ghiat provides the first in-depth study of feature and documentary films produced under the auspices of Mussolini s government that took as their subjects or settings Italy s African and Balkan colonies. These "empire films" were Italy's entry into an international market for the exotic. The films engaged its most experienced and cosmopolitan directors (Augusto Genina, Mario Camerini) as well as new filmmakers (Roberto Rossellini) who would make their marks in the postwar years. Ben-Ghiat sees these films as the start of the aesthetic revolution that would lead to neo-realism. Shot in Libya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, these movies reinforced Fascist racial and labor policies and were largely forgotten after the war. Ben-Ghiat restores them to Italian and international film history in this gripping account of empire, war, and the cinema of dictatorship."

"Ruth Ben-Ghiat's Fascist Modernities: Italy 1922-1945 is among the very best analyses of Fascist culture in any language. Based on a truly amazing amount of research, this volume traces the first stirrings of a generation of Italian writers and film directors who would pass from Fascism through the Resistance to militancy in the Communist, Socialist, Action, and Christian Democratic parties and then beyond into the new Italy of the 'economic miracle.'"--Alexander De Grand, author of "Bottai e la cultura fascista

"A superb and original work of scholarship, Fascist Modernities give us a startling new picture of the Italian fascist period and its cultural politics, as well as remarkable new analyses of Italian fascist anti-Semitism and of the relation between Italy's colonial aspirations and conquests and its modernizing schemes. Most impressive of all, Ben-Ghiat single-handedly changes our understanding of the place of realism in Italian literary history and in twentieth-century cinema."--Barbara Spackman, author of "Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology and Social Fantasy in Italy

"Ruth Ben-Ghiat's book is an important contribution to the history of fascist culture, showing the complex ways in which fascism used intellectuals and intellectuals used fascism."--Alexander Stille, author of "Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian-Jewish Families Under Fascism