In previous books, Holocaust historian Timothy Snyder dissected the events and values that enabled the rise of Hitler and Stalin and the execution of their catastrophic policies. With Twenty Lessons, Snyder draws from the darkest hours of the twentieth century to provide hope for the twenty-first. As he writes, "Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism and communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn...

"Today's Republican party is not a "normal" political party in the American tradition. It has become an autocratic movement masquerading as a political party. As Stuart Stevens argues in The Conspiracy to End America, if we look away from that truth, we greatly increase the likelihood that the America we love will slip away, never to return. Whenever a democracy slides into autocracy, there are five critical elements at work: financers, propagandists,...

A National Book Award-winning author examines America's current descent into a failed state and discusses the ways we can leverage this moment to forge a new path forward that overcomes injustice, legislative paralysis, and political divides.

"Some democracies are highly homogeneous. Others have long maintained a brutal racial or religious hierarchy, with some groups dominating and exploiting others. Never in history has a democracy succeeded in being both diverse and equal, treating members of many different ethnic or religious groups fairly. And yet achieving that goal is now central to the democratic project in countries around the world. It is, Yascha Mounk argues, the greatest experiment...

"A riveting account of how the Nazi Party came to power and how the failures of the Weimar Republic and the shortsightedness of German politicians allowed it to happen. Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In [this book], Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time. To say...

A bold rethinking of the most powerful political idea in the world--democracy--and the story of how radical democracy can yet transform America. Democracy has been the American religion since before the Revolution--from New England town halls to the multicultural democracy of Atlantic pirate ships. But can our current political system, one that seems responsive only to the wealthiest among us and leaves most Americans feeling disengaged, voiceless,...

"Today, democracy is the world's only broadly accepted political system, and yet it has become synonymous with disappointment and crisis. How did it come to this? In [this book], James Miller, author of the classic history of 1960s protest "Democracy Is in the Streets", offers a lively, surprising, and urgent history of the democratic idea from its first stirrings to the present."--Dust jacket.

"In Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe, Sheri Berman traces the long history of democracy in its cradle, Europe. She explains that in fact, just about every democratic wave in Europe initially failed, either collapsing in upon itself or succumbing to the forces of reaction. Yet even when democratic waves failed, there were always some achievements that lasted. Even the most virulently reactionary regimes could not suppress every element of democratic...

"The complete history of democracy, its champions, and its detractors-from the assemblies of ancient Mesopotamia to present perils"--