Former Chilean dictator used public funds to accumulate a vast personal library.

Augusto Pinoche's military dictatorship from 1973-1990 might have led to the murder or disappearance of over 3,000 people, but that didn't hamper the ability to build a library with tens of thousands of books.

The New York Times reports Pinoche's collection is heavy on books about the Napoleonic-era, but contains almost no poetry or fiction, except one book--The Rigor of the Bugle, a sizzling 19th-century page-turner about Chilean military life none of us have heard about.

And here we thought dictators were poetic romantics at heart.



photo: The Mirror