Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

Lessons for the present and future, if we heed them

How can we recognize authoritarian personalities and patterns of behavior that have brought ruin to their countries? The last century has been, in some respects, the era of “strongmen,” according to Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University. In “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” she reviews the history of the …