In the chap­ter titled “Eccen­tric Dic­ta­tors,” var­i­ous anec­dotes about dif­fer­ent world lead­ers are explored, show­cas­ing their quirks, inter­ests, and noto­ri­ous actions. The chap­ter opens with an amus­ing sto­ry about Sal­vador Dali gift­ing a scepter to Nico­lae Ceauşes­cu, hint­ing at the Roman­ian dic­ta­tor’s obliv­i­ous­ness to pos­si­bly being mocked. Adolf Hitler’s unex­pect­ed veg­e­tar­i­an­ism in his final years, only con­sum­ing mashed pota­toes and clear broth, is men­tioned with­out clear expla­na­tion for such dietary choic­es. Joseph Stal­in’s extreme para­noia led him to bizarre extents, such as ana­lyz­ing feces to gauge loy­al­ty, even scru­ti­niz­ing Mao Zedong’s to assess his mood.

Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad’s pas­sion for civ­il engi­neer­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly traf­fic plan­ning, is high­light­ed along with his pres­i­den­tial role in Iran. South Sudan’s Sal­va Kiir Mayardit’s affec­tion for a Stet­son gift­ed by George W. Bush prompts him to amass a large col­lec­tion. The dark humor of François “Papa Doc” Duva­lier curs­ing John F. Kennedy using a Voodoo doll is shared, along with Pol Pot’s dev­as­tat­ing reign over Cam­bo­dia, which led to the deaths of up to 3 mil­lion peo­ple.

Oth­er dic­ta­tors like Alexan­der Lukashenko, Kim Jong-Un, and Mobu­tu Sese Seko are not­ed for their per­son­al fetish­es, such as a love for hock­ey, extrav­a­gant spend­ing on alco­hol, and enforc­ing a god­like media por­tray­al, respec­tive­ly. Fidel Cas­tro’s prag­mat­ic view on rev­o­lu­tion, Sad­dam Hus­sein’s repub­lish­ing of hate­ful pam­phlets, and Kim Jong-Il’s lux­u­ri­ous indul­gences con­trast sharply with the mun­dane or ide­o­log­i­cal extrem­ism that marked their rule. Sto­ries of per­son­al trans­for­ma­tions, such as Joseph Stal­in adopt­ing a more Russ­ian iden­ti­ty and Bashar al-Assad’s shift from oph­thal­mol­o­gy to pres­i­den­cy, reflect the com­plex per­sonas behind their pub­lic images.

Mao Zedong’s dis­trust in edu­ca­tion, Idi Amin’s whim­si­cal claim to Scot­tish roy­al­ty, and the con­tin­u­a­tion of the Duva­lier dic­ta­tor­ship in Haiti illus­trate the sur­re­al real­i­ty of their gov­er­nance. The chap­ter also touch­es on the self-aggran­dize­ment and accu­mu­la­tion of wealth by dic­ta­tors such as Manuel Nor­ie­ga and Muam­mar Gaddafi, under­lin­ing the inter­sec­tion of eccen­tric­i­ty and bru­tal­i­ty in their lead­er­ship styles. This eclec­tic mix of sto­ries under­scores the pecu­liar per­son­al traits and extreme mea­sures that have char­ac­ter­ized the rule of some of the world’s most infa­mous dic­ta­tors.