topics: |  biography | dictator | history

book review

"absolute power corrupts absolutely: right down to the drapes" :
 
This is the bedroom boudoir on Porfirio Diaz's presidential train while he
was ruling Mexico from 1877-1911.  Smothered in silk and damask upholstery,
Peter York feels it is "suggestive of a Texan whorehouse".

Over Mussolini's desk, his portrait looms at us out of the dark, his eyes a
fanatic fringe.  One time actress Evita Peron poses over the piano, with
all the right accoutrements of refined living; she and Juan have made a lot
of money recently by helping 15,000 Nazi war criminals escape from Spain to
Argentina.

A stuffed cheetah and a tiger skin with stuffed head sit on the rug
beside Josef Tito, reading a book.  A large number of the dictators here
were village boys, most notably, Stalin - indeed, a majority.

The language is occasionally uncivilized - Saddam is a stupid country boy,
his tastes are hideous, as are the tastes of other Arabs who live near
Edgeware Road.  Most of the dictators are quite stupid, but I wonder how
they got this way!

 
A lurid image from one of Saddam's palaces. These paintings were most
likely drawn by western Sci-Fi painters; whether they were commissioned or
not York cannot tell.  Most of Saddam's palaces, it seems, were quite empty
and hardly used.

This otherwise fine and potentially interesting book was quite ruined for
me because of a stubborn stupidity.  None of the images have captions!!
The text refers to the image and the page numbers, but who wants to be
forced to wade through text?  I am sure York will tell me, but that is the
very point!  There, I detect the dictator in him.

No wonder it was on deep discount at Borders where I picked it up for 2$!!
Nonetheless, one rainy day I did wade thrrough it, and it is quite
interesting.  Yes, because of those captionless pictures, perhaps I read
more of the text than I would have!

blurb:
Welcome to the fabulous lifestyles of the cruel and despotic. Running with
the idea that our homes are where we are truly ourselves, Peter York's
wildly original and scathingly funny look at the interior decorating tastes
of some of history's most alarming dictators proves that . Mining rare,
jaw-dropping photographs of interiors now mostly (thankfully) destroyed,
York's hilarious profiles of 16 inner sanctums of the scary leaves no
endangered tiger pelt unturned, from Saddam Hussein's creepy private art
collection to General Noriega's Christmas tree to the strange tube and knob
contraption in the Ceausescu bathroom. All your favorite dictators are
here: Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Tito, Mussolini, Mobutu, Idi Amin, Ferdinand
and Imelda Marcos— each with their own uniquely frightful chic. An interior
decorating book like no other, "Dictator Style" is a welcome tonic for a
world in need of a good laugh at the expense of the all-powerful.