Friendly Tyrants : An American Dilemma

What do the South Vietnamese government, the Shah and Ferdinand Marcos have in common?

All were allied to the United States; all defied democratic and liberal norms; and all three fell in a blaze, creating problems for the United States.

These three cases - and another eighteen more - are the subject of Friendly Tyrants, the first study ever to survey the contentious, persistent problem of U.S. government relations with pro-American authoritarian rulers.