Moghaddam (psychology, government, Georgetown U.) studied the Iranian Revolution firsthand. Emphasizing the mismatch between life under dictatorships and academic discussions of dictatorships that focus on ideologies, he presents an empirically-based "springboard" model of dictatorship that distinguishes between traditional psychology's focus on causally determined behavior and a normative psychology that specifies the factors and processes that enable potential dictators to spring to power and create alternative norms. Dictatorship and democracy are considered as poles of a continuum. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)