Ian Kershaw explores how far individual leaders can alter the course of history, whether operating on the widest stage (Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini) or with a more national impact (Tito, Franco). In a contrasting group of profiles (Churchill, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Gorbachev, Thatcher, Kohl) he uses his exceptional skills to think through how other, strikingly different figures wielded power. Builders and destroyers of modern Europe.