Revolutionary Monsters

Lenin. Mao. Castro. Mugabe. Khomeini.

All sparked movements in the name of liberating their people from their oppressors—capitalists, foreign imperialists, or dictators in their own country. These revolutionaries rallied the masses in the name of freedom, only to become more tyrannical than those they replaced. 

Much has been written about the anatomy of revolution from Edmund Burke to Crane Brinton Crane, Franz Fanon, and contemporary theorists of revolution found in the modern academy. Yet what is missing is a dissection of the revolutionary minds that destroyed the old for the creation of a more harmful new. 

Revolutionary Monsters presents a collective biography of five modern day revolutionaries who came into power calling for the liberation of the people only to end up killing millions of people in the name of revolution:  Lenin (Russia), Mao (China), Castro (Cuba), Mugabe (Zimbabwe), and Khomeini (Iran). Revolutionary Monsters explores basic questions about the revolutionary personality, and examines how these revolutionaries came to envision themselves as prophets of a new age.

Donald T. Critchlow, Katzin Family Professor at Arizona State University, is the author and editor of 23 books including most recently, "In Defense of Populism" (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020); "Republican Character: From Nixon to Reagan" (University of Pennsylvania Press,2017), and "Future Right: The Forging of a New Republican Majority" (St. Martin’s Press, 2016). Other books include "American Political History: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford University Press, 2016); "When Hollywood Was Right: How Movie Moguls, Film Stars, and Big Business Remade American Politics" (Cambridge University Press, 2013); "The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Made Political History" (Harvard University Press 2007; and Kansas University Press, 2010); and "Phyllis Schlafly and the Grassroots Conservatism" (Princeton University Press, 2007); "Intended Consequences: Family Planning, Abortion, and the Federal Government" (Oxford University Press, 2003). Critchlow has lectured extensively in Europe as a distinguished State Department lecturer, and in China and Brazil. He is the co-editor of the first definitive history of the United States, published in Polish, "Historia Stanów Zjeednockownych Ameryki" (Warsaw,1995), five volumes. He has appeared on C-SPAN, NPR's Talk of the Nation, and BBC World News, and other news outlets.