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Vlad the Impaler rep­re­sent­ed as Pon­tius Pilate judg­ing Jesus Christ, 1463 (artist unknown)

This seems to be the best book on Vlad III of Wal­lachia, the his­tor­i­cal “Drac­ula”. It at least explodes the sil­li­est inter­pre­ta­tions, put for­ward by Marx­ists under the Ceauces­cu regime, that seem to have found their way into many sec­ondary sources. Vlad seems to have been a per­fectly ordi­nary lit­tle gang­ster, com­mit­ting plen­ty of atroc­i­ties, but not much dif­fer­ent in style and moti­va­tion from those of oth­er thugs rul­ing prin­ci­pal­i­ties. Com­pared to the colos­sal out­rages of the reli­gious wars that tore Ger­many apart, soon after, it was all small potatoes.

While Vlad enjoyed tor­tur­ing peo­ple and impal­ing them, he was no more vicious than, say, the Ref­or­ma­tion the­olo­gian John Calvin, who enjoyed tor­tur­ing peo­ple by slow­ly roast­ing them on a spit while their heads were soaked with cold water to pro­long the agony .… a tor­ture that he once con­demned two chil­dren to. And he isn’t any more of a mon­ster than Guata­mala’s dic­ta­tor José Ríos Montt, whom Ronald Rea­gan admired and called “a man of great per­sonal integri­ty and commitment.”