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Big Caesars and Little Caesars
- How They Rise and How They Fall - from Julius Caesar to Boris Johnson
- Narrated by: Paul Blezard
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
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Big Caesars and Little Caesars
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Summary
A WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR
Who said that dictatorship was dead? The world today is full of Strong Men and their imitators. Caesarism is alive and well. Yet in modern times it’s become a strangely neglected subject. Ferdinand Mount opens up a fascinating exploration of how and why Caesars seize power and why they fall.
"Fast paced and impassioned" — Sunday Telegraph
"Wonderfully wry" — The Guardian
"...a delight" — Sunday Times
"Delicious work, beautifully and acerbically written" — Wall Street Journal
There is a comforting illusion shared by historians and political commentators from Fukuyama back to Macaulay, Mill and Marx, that history progresses in a nice straight line towards liberal democracy or socialism, despite the odd hiccup.
In reality, every democracy, however sophisticated or stable it may look, has been attacked or actually destroyed by a would-be Caesar, from Ancient Greece to the present day. Marx was wrong. This Caesarism is not an absurd throwback, it is an ever-present danger.
There are Big Caesars who set out to achieve total social control and Little Caesars who merely want to run an agreeable kleptocracy without opposition: from Julius Caesar and Oliver Cromwell through Napoleon and Bolivar, to Mussolini, Salazar, De Gaulle and Trump. The saga of Boris Johnson and Brexit frequently crops up in this author's narrative as a vivid, if Lilliputian instance of the same phenomenon.
The final part of this book describes how and why would-be Caesars come to grief, from the Gunpowder Plot to Trump’s march on the Capitol and the ejection of Boris Johnson by his own MPs, and ends with a defence of the grubby glories of parliamentary politics and a thought-provoking roadmap of the way back to constitutional government.
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What listeners say about Big Caesars and Little Caesars
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Mike
- 21-08-24
How do become a dictator
This is a fabulous description of the above with numerous examples from ancient history and the contemporary era, and a convincing argument of why the rest of us should letting anyone do it…
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Mark Lanigan
- 24-07-23
reasonable story, awful narration
The narrator sounds like Jacob Rees-Mogg reading a cookbook. dreadful plummy accent and the hilarious French accent I could do without. the story jumps around a lot and doesn't make many memorable points but is quite interesting. Listen to a sample and see if you can put up with 11 hours of it before you buy.
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1 person found this helpful