Author talk
Gibson’s Bookstore is pleased to present local teacher Brandon K Gauthier in the launch of his new book of history, Before Evil: Young Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, and Kim on April 27 at 6:30 p.m.
Masks are strongly encouraged but no longer required for vaccinated attendees. We can’t predict the future course of the pandemic, so Gibson’s reserves the right to institute masking and/or vaccination rules for this event as circumstances dictate. RSVPs are not required, but you may sign up to receive an email notification if the event must switch to virtual at forms.gle/opVjBpRbPBZfSyFz7. Your submitted email addresses will not be kept after the event is over.
If you cannot make this event, signed copies of Before Evilmay be ordered from the Gibson’s Bookstore website.
Should we humanize the world’s most inhumane leaders? Adolf Hitler. Joseph Stalin. Benito Mussolini. Mao Zedong. Kim Il Sung. Vladimir Lenin. These cruel dictators wrote their names on the pages of history in the blood of countless innocent victims. Yet they themselves were once young people searching for their place in the world, dealing with challenges many of us face – parental authority, education, romance, loss – and doing so in ways that might be uncomfortably familiar.
Historian Brandon K. Gauthier has created a fascinating work – epic yet intimate, well-researched but immensely readable, clear-eyed and empathetic – looking at the lives of these six dictators, with a focus on their youths. We watch Lenin’s older brother executed at the hands of the Tsar’s police – an event that helped radicalize this overachieving high-schooler. We observe Stalin grappling with the death of his young, beautiful wife. We see Hitler’s mother mourning the loss of three young children — and determined that her first son to survive infancy would find his place in the world.
The purpose isn’t to excuse or simply explain these horrible men, but rather to treat them with the empathy they themselves too often lacked. We may prefer to hold such lives at arm’s length so as to demonize them at will, but this book reminds us that these monstrous rulers were also human beings–and perhaps more relatable than we’d like.
Gauthier completed his doctorate in Modern History at Fordham University in New York City in 2016. He is the director of global education at The Derryfield School and an adjunct professor of history for Fordham University. He speaks passionately, and loudly. He frequently asks his students to yell “who cares?” and then tell him why he’s wrong about everything. When not teaching and writing, he listens to music at loud volumes and walks long distances. Historical conundrums keep him up at night. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Concord. Before Evil is his first book.
