Not everyone can become a tyrant, posits Dean Haycock; it requires very specific personality traits and a particular confluence of events to gain absolute control over entire nations. Creating profiles of autocratic leaders and terrorists is one way governments try to understand, predict, and influence their actions. Assessing such figures as Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Qaddafi, Haycock lays out the blend of sadism, paranoia, and ambition that—coupled with political upheaval—can lay the groundwork for a dictatorship.