The best books of counter history to enrich your world view

Strongmen reads like a Wanted: For Demagoguery all-points bulletin, so we can identify the qualities that are present in totalitarian rulers. There are specific traits that these men—and they are all men—share, like corruption, deceit, propaganda, violence, exaggerated machismo, and misogyny. Their road to power is launched by apparent idealism in reclaiming the lost power of both the country and their followers. She writes, “The strong man’s trick is to seem exceptional and yet to embody the everyman, with all his endearing flaws.” Subjects range from Mussolini and Franco to the authoritarians of today: Putin, Trump, and Erdogan. The author reveals the shockingly similar playbooks of these self-proclaimed saviors of their nation, with a goal of enabling us to see who these men are and what to do when we find that they have crept into our home.

Bali is known as a peaceful Hindu "paradise” in Asia. But today most tourists are ignorant of its tumultuous history. In my book I travel by sea on a freighter from Singapore to Jakarta, and journey through Java to Bali. Before reading Hanna’s book, I too was largely ignorant of the invasions Bali had experienced before tourists came: centuries of domination by Muslim sultanates; then early 1800s, the Dutch alongside the French; then the British, followed by the Dutch again in 1816. Next, Bali’s people joined the fight for independence before Japan invaded in 1942. The Dutch returned in 1945, so back to the struggle for independence 1945-1949. Within Indonesia, Bali had to fight hard to maintain its Hindu religion and culture. A peaceful paradise?

Afro-Asian Connections looks at the cross-cultural relations between people of African and Asian ancestries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The chapters address how their common history in agrarian labor led to numerous interactions that have been reflected in the region’s history, literature, art, and religion. I found this continuation of the exploration of Afro-Asian sociocultural exchanges in Latin America initiated by Kathy López and Evelyn Hu-DeHart years earlier extremely timely and revealing, as it underscores a long history of intermittent alliances and animosities.