It was founded by Marie Tussaud, who made her first waxworks from the bodies of dead people. The museum's Chamber of Horrors has been filled with waxen murderers, rapists, and dictators.

Author Wolfe’s version of Trotsky is itself a kind of waxworks figure (the writing sounds as if Ernest Hemingway were trying to parody Gromyko), but the book has the great merit of pointing to ...