cover image HOW TO RULE THE WORLD: A Handbook for the Aspiring Dictator

HOW TO RULE THE WORLD: A Handbook for the Aspiring Dictator

Andre de Guillaume, Andri de Guillaume, Andre de Guillaume, . . Chicago Review, $15 (144pp) ISBN 978-1-55652-497-4

This slim satirical volume purports to map the road to world (or at least great) power from childhood to the grave. Send-ups of everything abound, from pop psychology questionnaires such as "Have You Got What It Takes?" and lists of "Career Paths" (salesman being ideal, since it teaches how to lie with a straight face). After advising on how to seize power, by force or fraud, the tips then cover designing a national flag, managing money while gaining as little of it as possible honestly and arranging your love life so that it enhances your respectability. (This means that your wives and mistresses never meet.) There is even a guide for retirement, should one live so long. The historical snippets have much the same tone, although the portrayals of kids torturing animals to prepare for tyranny and the distinctly Third World flavor of the dictators may not strike everyone as funny. Others may more mildly object to bracketing Elizabeth I of England with Attila the Hun and the Bertelsmann conglomerate with the Mongols. The latter is an insider nod to de Guillaume's alter ego, unacknowledged in the text or on the jacket copy: when not aspiring to thrones, de Guillaume is called Andrew Wilkins, and serves as publisher of Australian Bookseller & Publisher. (May)