Jay Nordlinger is a senior editor of National Review and a book fellow of the National Review Institute. He writes about a variety of subjects, including politics, foreign affairs, and the arts. He is music critic for The New Criterion. Since 2002, he has hosted a series of public interviews at the Salzburg Festival. For the National Review website, he writes a column called “Impromptus.” With Mona Charen, he hosts the Need to Know podcast, and he also hosts a podcast called “ Q&A.” In 2011, he filmed The Human Parade, with Jay Nordlinger, a TV series bringing hour-long interviews with various...
Overview
What’s it like to be the son or daughter of a dictator? An absolute and ruthless dictator on the Stalin level? What’s it like to bear a name synonymous with oppression, terror, and evil?
Jay Nordlinger, a senior editor of National Review, set out to answer that question. And he does so in his new book, Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators. He looks into the families of the worst of the worst: Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, and so on.
Some of the kids are down-the-line loyalists. Some even succeed their father as dictator (as in North Korea and Syria). Some have doubts. A few defect. All are rocked by prison, war, exile, and the like. These men and women lead all too interesting lives.
This lecture took place on October 29, 2015 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
