This list-driven format is digestible and impactful, up to a point.

It is a list of twenty punchy, at times poignant, lessons from history, rather than a sustained argument. The book’s format seems designed to connect with readers habituated to skimming social media feeds and to ease them into engaging with serious issues. Where it falls short is mainly in its advice on opposing tyranny. Its strength is in highlighting important features and mechanisms of the move toward dictatorship.

But no matter what you think of Trump, you can learn much from Snyder’s book. Clearly Snyder, a historian at Yale, was impelled to write the book in the wake of Trump’s rise to power, a development he views as alarming. This short book is very much a product of the moment. Timothy Snyder’s incisive book, On Tyranny, aims to distill enduring lessons from the twentieth century on the rise and functioning of tyranny - and to help us preserve our freedom. Would you recognize the signs of an incipient tyranny? Would you know how to oppose it? By Timothy Snyder (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017). Twenty Lessons 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.On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.? As he writes, ?Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism and communism. With Twenty Lessons, Snyder draws from the darkest hours of the twentieth century to provide hope for the twenty-first. In his books Bloodlands and Black Earth, he has carefully dissected the events and values that enabled the rise of Hitler and Stalin and the execution of their catastrophic policies. Timothy Snyder is one of the most celebrated historians of the Holocaust.

Against all predictions, one of the most-disliked presidential candidates in history had swept the electoral college, elevating a man with open contempt for democratic norms and institutions to the height of power. On November 9th, millions of Americans woke up to the impossible: the election of Donald Trump as president. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century Timothy Snyder € 11.99 This item arrived at our Den Haag store within the past 8 weeks If not in stock, the expected delivery time to our store for this item will be 7-10 working days.Īn historian of fascism offers a guide for surviving and resisting America?s turn towards authoritarianism.

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder