Die Achse der Autokraten by Anne Applebaum (Büchergilde Gutenberg)

Originally published by Doubleday as Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, this is Büchergilde Gutenberg’s German edition of Anne Applebaum’s book about autocrats and how they use corruption, control, and propaganda to stay in power. It was translated by Jürgen Neubauer. Applebaum’s appeal to fight with optimism against anti-democratic powers was awarded the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels 2024.

For the cover design, Clara Scheffler opted for AM Tripoli. Designed by Alessandro Bombieri, this all-caps display face is part of CAST’s Alfabeti Modernisti, a collection of revivals of Italian modernist wood and metal typefaces from the 1930s to 1940s, based on Luca Lattuga’s research. According to CAST,

Tripoli was produced as a wood type by Xilografia Italiana […] probably shortly after 1934, when the company was founded. We can assume this from the historical context, as Tripoli is the capital of Libya, and Mussolini instigated large-scale immigration of Italian settlers to Libya in the early 1930s (after a war against local insurgents in which Italian troops committed several war crimes).

The typeface likely was chosen for its pointed, aggressive-looking glyphs like the counterless A, the E with triangular middle bar, and specifically the angular S that resembles a mirrored Z. Such a lightning-shaped form evokes associations with all kinds of autocratic and downright fascist regimes, from the pseudo-runes of the German nazis and the British Flash and Circles symbol to parodies like the Z of megalomaniac Zorglub in the Spirou et Fantasio comics to, most recently, the “zwastika” Z symbol used by Russian troops in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine since 2022. The zig-zag motif is echoed by the red multiline pattern that runs under and over the typography.