On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “bracing” (Vox) guide for surviving and resisting America’s turn towards authoritarianism, from “a rising public intellectual unafraid to make bold connections between past and present” (The New York Times)
“Timothy Snyder reasons with unparalleled clarity, throwing the past and future into sharp relief. He has written the rare kind of book that can be read in one sitting but will keep you coming back to help regain your bearings.”—Masha Gessen
The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.
On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.
“Timothy Snyder reasons with unparalleled clarity, throwing the past and future into sharp relief. He has written the rare kind of book that can be read in one sitting but will keep you coming back to help regain your bearings.”—Masha Gessen
The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.
On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.
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Community Reviews
The most important easy read you will read today. Yet the hardest thing to recognize in the atmosphere of today. What seems impossible both in Hope and in Destruction will be the future of our country. We are all players in the destination of this United States. Every day is a new beginning play it to keep it United.
While this little book will assuredly be blasted as liberal propaganda, the lessons from the past are too stark to ignore. Itâs horrifying to see examples of how easily the public can be influenced into transgressions against other humans, and at scale. My key takeaway is how important it is for every citizen to take responsibility for their education, exposure, and interactions to contribute in meaningful ways and steer us away from tyranny. This is a book Iâll be buying extra copies of to put into the hands of more indifferent individuals in my circle.
There's a lot of incredible insight here, which I often find from Timothy Snyder. And some of it was actually quite moving. "#9: Be Kind to Our Language" particularly stood out to me. I also really appreciated "#14: Establish a Private Life", as this theme is really a necessity for the dangers of a "post-truth" world, and one I'm seeing come up in other really important works (such as Neal Curtis's Idiotism, which every person on Earth should read).
Though, to be frank, there is also a heavy dose of American exceptionalism in a couple chapters, which is obnoxious and unhelpful. For example, "#19: Be a Patriot" is just blatantly contradictory to everything else in the book, including the notion that a real patriot puts their own country first - despite multiple times having condemned the phrase "America First". Also included is the very American perception that democracy is failing all across Europe while the US is just now flirting with threats, which is not true - there are three antidemocratic regimes in power in three small European nations, while the US, Russia, and China, the three largest powers in the world, are all profoundly antidemocratic and as such constitute a much graver threat.
I also found certain elements of his writing (such as an exclusive usage of male pronouns) to be distinctly old-fashioned and a use of language that contradicts rather than supports his message of historical inclusion of all.
But overall, as usual, Snyder has written an important book especially for middle-of-the-road observers of politics to read.
Though, to be frank, there is also a heavy dose of American exceptionalism in a couple chapters, which is obnoxious and unhelpful. For example, "#19: Be a Patriot" is just blatantly contradictory to everything else in the book, including the notion that a real patriot puts their own country first - despite multiple times having condemned the phrase "America First". Also included is the very American perception that democracy is failing all across Europe while the US is just now flirting with threats, which is not true - there are three antidemocratic regimes in power in three small European nations, while the US, Russia, and China, the three largest powers in the world, are all profoundly antidemocratic and as such constitute a much graver threat.
I also found certain elements of his writing (such as an exclusive usage of male pronouns) to be distinctly old-fashioned and a use of language that contradicts rather than supports his message of historical inclusion of all.
But overall, as usual, Snyder has written an important book especially for middle-of-the-road observers of politics to read.
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