Despots : How Trump is Turning America into Putin's Russia - Daniel Sixsmith

Pre-order. Published 10 September 2026 — we'll send your copy on publication day. Order now and we'll put one aside for you. Free UK delivery on orders over £20, or collect from the shop in Oxford's Covered Market.

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A razor-sharp analysis of the increasing - and terrifying - parallels between Trump's America and Putin's Russia, from the former BBC Moscow Correspondent and Sunday Times bestselling author Martin Sixsmith. "Gripping, terrifying, urgent, necessary." - Ian Rankin
"Anyone who cares for democracy and freedom, and who fears for the future of both, should go and read this book." - Jonathan DimblebyLong Live the King. Since his re-election as US president, Donald Trump has made good on things he only dreamed of accomplishing in his first term. He has smashed constitutional constraints, trampled on free speech, suborned the judiciary, demonised the media and crushed protests on the streets. He has secured the backing of America's oligarchs by the offer of mutual enrichment and inflated his personal wealth by flouting ethical standards. US foreign policy is no longer based on values but on greed, while at home the White House has intervened in almost every area of people's lives, sending the National Guard into America's cities, telling educators what schoolchildren should be taught and threatening universities when they beg to differ. According to Martin Sixsmith, the BBC's long-serving former Moscow and Washington Correspondent, it is all eerily familiar from what Russia went through in the early-2000s. Despots is Sixsmith's account of how two aspiring dictators came to power in nominally electoral democracies then dismantled the pillars of democracy from within, one following confidently in the footsteps of the other. As in Putin's Russia, so in Trump's America: the US is fast-forwarding through what Russia endured in the first five years under Putin, and the parallels this time are much clearer, more overt and increasingly terrifying. Praise for Martin Sixsmith"To read Sixsmith is to want to read more Sixsmith" - FORBES
"Sixsmith has the knack of delivering complex material with a clear voice" - THE TIMES
"The virtue and originality of Martin Sixsmith's The War on Nerves is to see almost every aspect of the stand-off in psychological terms" - THE ECONOMIST
"The Russia Conundrum is essential reading for anyone who really wants to understand 21st century Russia" - BUSINESS INSIDER
"Highly engaging . . . thrillingly told . . . My Sins Go With Me is a powerful story of a history that remains far from settled" - DAILY TELEGRAPH