power, but students, intellectuals and the news media united against him, calling his politics and ethics suspect, his regime corrupt. His diaries reflect his confusion at the decline in his fortunes; his growing conviction, verging on clinical paranoia, that all around him were enemies; his elaborate rationalization of his dictatorship; his continual scheming; and his willingness to resort to violence, including assassination. The author of this book, a Los Angeles journalist, has had access to Marcos's diaries, and provides an account of a mind obsessed with power and a portrait of the collapse of a national leader and the government he ruled.

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