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He did it with the short, anti-authoritarianism primer, On. But in 2017, Yale University historian Timothy Snyder caught the zeitgeist. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Professors rarely become widely known outside academia.
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We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. 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 “Timothy Snyder reasons with unparalleled clarity, throwing the past and future into sharp relief. 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. Such a development is not implausible, Snyder maintains, because our system of checks and balances has rarely faced a situation in which the less popular of two. 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) On Tyranny shares the fears of the Founding Fathers of a usurpation of power by a single individual or group or the circumvention of law by rulers for their own benefit (10).