<span>In the Bogart classic <em>Casablanca</em></span><span>, Lisbon is depicted as a portal of escape from Nazi-occupied Europe. In his account of the city during World War II, Neill Lochery shows that the Portuguese capital might have been a better setting than Casablanca for a film about refugees and wartime intrigue. Fascinating if sometimes redundant (editor, please!), <em>Lisbon</em></span><span> the book is populated by many movie-worthy real-life figures, none more intriguing than the Portuguese dictator, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, the scholarly economist from a humble background who (unlike his brother tyrants) never wore a uniform and disliked public speaking. Among the dictators of his age, he was a moderate and a wily man determined to maintain his country's perilous neutrality at all cost. Lochery explains Salazar's unwillingness to join the Allies by his fear that Franco, his bellicose neighbor, might be encouraged by the Nazis to annex Portugal. One point deserves more explanation: how could a Ph.D. academic like Salazar ever seize control of a nation in an era when most dictators schooled themselves in street brawls.</span>
