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Modern Dictators: Third World Coup-Makers, Strongmen, and Populist Tyrants, by Barry Rubin (McGraw-Hill, 385 pp., $17.95)

Barry Rubin’s study of modern dictatorships in the Third World is redolent of the analytical approach of James Burnham, and though Burnham is not mentioned by name, his principal mentor, Niccolò Machiavelli, is frequently cited. Mr. Rubin is coolly dispassionate in his dissection of the anatomy of contemporary tyranny, attentive to the social forces that underlie and perpetuate it, and pessimistic in his estimate of its future. His conclusions should be carefully studied, for they challenge many of the preconceptions on which most conservatives’ (as well as liberals’) ideas of Third World politics are based.

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Samuel T. Francis

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Modern Dictators: Third World Coup-Makers, Strongmen, and Populist Tyrants, by Barry Rubin (McGraw-Hill, 385 pp., $17.95)

Barry Rubin’s study of modern dictatorships in the Third World is redolent of the analytical approach of James Burnham, and though Burnham is not mentioned by name, his principal mentor, Niccolò Machiavelli, is frequently cited. Mr. Rubin is coolly dispassionate in his dissection of the anatomy of contemporary tyranny, attentive to the social forces that underlie and perpetuate it, and pessimistic in his estimate of its future. His conclusions should be carefully studied, for they challenge many of the preconceptions on which most conservatives’ (as well as liberals’) ideas of Third World politics are based.