I dunno. There are two kinds of such books - those published before the ascension to power and those published afterwards (the Little Red Book is one example of

I dunno. There are two kinds of such books - those published before the ascension to power and those published afterwards (the Little Red Book is one example of the latter.) Only books of the first kind might have contributed to the author's rise to power, but it's hard to tell how much, and at least intuitively it doesn't seem like any of the leaders you mentioned rose to power mainly due to their writing ability. I think it's interesting to read the writings of an influential person, and sometimes it is mandatory to read them even if it's not that interesting, but I doubt that these people mainly become influential through their writing (at least the effect seems much smaller than the reverse - books becoming widely read because of the author's influence on world events.) It certainly works in both directions, I just think one is much stronger than the other. The pen and the sword... well, persuasion is mightier than an individual's brute force because you can mobilize the force of others through persuasion. But is "pen" the right metaphor for persuasion in a world where both dictators and democratically elected leaders rely on the support of huge groups of people, many of whom rarely read, have poor reading comprehension (don't we all? especially when reading what we disagree with?), and are most easily swayed by simple ideas boiling down to "the source of your troubles whom you should rob to improve your life is X"? If the world is run a by a literate few born into a powerful minority, then perhaps a pen might be more powerful. As to religious texts... I think they're kinda different in that say Lenin's writing could rival the popularity of religious texts for a while, at a time when printing was very cheap, but it no longer can. Contrast that to religious texts which remained popular for hundreds and thousands of years at a time when reproducing texts was very expensive. And there was never a lack of either tyrants or statesmen with popular support during those years, moreover, quite a few of those tyrants were worshiped as gods, and both tyrants and elected politicians wrote texts. None of these texts are remotely as widely read as religious texts. So whatever the cause, the handful of popular prophets are vastly more popular than any of history's politicians, and are way better at maintaining their influence from their graves.