Who are the greatest villains, the direst leaders and most offensive personalities to have spread their regrettable influence throughout the modern world? Be it through politics, war, sport, culture or just their general idiocy?
Who are the greatest villains, the direst leaders and most offensive personalities to have spread their regrettable influence throughout the modern world? Be it through politics, war, sport, culture or just their general idiocy? Well, take your pick… From Adolf to Zuckerberg – via Mao and Mountbatten, OJ and Osama – 50 People Who Stuffed Up The World is filled with the nastiest names from the 20th century and beyond. These are men of infamy (and a handful of women) who have steered our good ship Humanity towards the World-War-fighting, smart-phone-tapping age we are mired in today, be it through their totalitarian visions of global dominance (Stalin, King Leopold II), ruinous warmongering (Hideki Tojo, George W Bush) or tragic megalomania (Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein). But the obvious political despots and historical heavy-hitters are just the half of it; there’s also the archetypal modern terrorist (Carlos the Jackal), the man behind the global obesity epidemic (Ancel Keys), the clothes-less emperor of modern art (Charles Saatchi), the world’s most notorious drug baron (Pablo Escobar), the father of the A-bomb (Robert Oppenheimer), architects of a failed social experiments (DF Malan & HF Verwoerd), the less expected sports villains (Lance Armstrong, Diego Maradona), the talentless icons of modern celebrity-dom (Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber) and our current surreal car-crash-in-motion (Donald Trump, of course). The result is a book with global appeal that is part popular history, part social commentary, and all entertainment.
