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Timothy Snyder

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century Paperback – February 28, 2017

by Timothy Snyder (Author)

2,248 customer reviews

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#1 New York Times Bestseller • A historian of fascism offers a guide for surviving and resisting America's turn towards authoritarianism.

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.

"Mr. Snyder is a rising public intellectual unafraid to make bold connections between past and present." —The New York Times

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Editorial Reviews

Review

A Washington Post Notable Book

"We are rapidly ripening for fascism. This American writer leaves us with no illusions about ourselves." —Svetlana Alexievich, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

"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. Put a copy in your pocket and one on your bedside table, and it will help you keep going for the next four years or however long it takes." —Masha Gessen

"Please read this book. So smart, so timely." —George Saunders

“Easily the most compelling volume among the early resistance literature. . . . A slim book that fits alongside your pocket Constitution and feels only slightly less vital. . . . Clarifying and unnerving. . . . A memorable work that is grounded in history yet imbued with the fierce urgency of what now.” —Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post

“Snyder knows this subject cold. . . . It is impossible to read aphorisms like ‘post-truth is pre-fascism’ and not feel a small chill about the current state of the Republic. . . . Approach this short book the same you would a medical pamphlet warning about an infectious disease. Read it carefully and be on the lookout for symptoms.” —Daniel W. Drezner, The New York Times Book Review

"As Timothy Snyder explains in his fine and frightening On Tyranny, a minority party now has near-total power and is therefore understandably frightened of awakening the actual will of the people." —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

“Snyder is superbly positioned to bring historical thinking to bear on the current political scene. . . . These unpretentious words remind us that political resistance isn’t a matter of action-movie heroics, but starts from a willingness to break from social expectations.” —Jeet Heer, The New Republic

“The perfect clear-eyed antidote to Trump’s deliberate philistinism. . . . These 128 pages are a brief primer in every important thing we might have learned from the history of the last century, and all that we appear to have forgotten.” —Tim Adams, The Guardian

“On Tyranny demands to be read.” —The Forward

“The manifesto we need. . . . Snyder detects dangerous trends in American politics that may be less visible to most citizens who cannot believe that our country, with its system of checks and balances, could succumb to illiberalism or authoritarianism.” —Darryl Holter, Los Angeles Review of Books

“Bracing. . . . On Tyranny is a call to action. . . . A brisk read packed with lucid prose.” —Vox

About the Author

Timothy Snyder is the Levin Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin and Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. Snyder is a member of the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and a permanent fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.

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Product details

Series: On Tyranny
Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: Tim Duggan Books; 1st edition (February 28, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780804190114
ISBN-13: 978-0804190114
ASIN: 0804190119
Product Dimensions: 4.4 x 0.4 x 6.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 2,248 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,174 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8 in Democracy (Books)
- #153 in World History (Books)
- #8 in Civics & Citizenship (Books)

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Kris Jennings

Ignominious effort!

January 3, 2019

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

If I compare this 'booket' to Petersen's work, it pales in insignificance and poor judgement. It is clearly written with a bias against President Trump, but more importantly uses the briefest of snippets in history to poorly justify his claims. He ignores the current 'Ministry of Truth' deployed by our media (a clearly socialist groupthink), in which "nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right." (1984) History has shown that it is the socialists and communists that devolve to mob rule and totalitarianism. This is the nationalism that "imposes itself on people incapable of understanding it", not the Trump form of nationalism which is essentially an enforcement of truth and justice, adhering to the will of the people and the Constitution that has served this country so well. For a History Lecturer, this effort gets a minimum grade! (and is a poor reflection on his university). He has NO idea of tyranny.
If he were to draw conclusions on tyranny from the 20th Century he would look at North Korea, China, Russia, Germany, Italy, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, South Africa and the many other countries that have failed under the guise of socialism which devolves to autocracy and totalitarianism, not to mention economic failure.
Don't waste your time or your money on this one. Yale? Really?

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HrnyhairyTop Contributor: Eye Makeup

A must read in the current times we are living in

June 18, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This book is a must read for anyone that has any interest in learning from the mistakes that horrible tyrants made in the past and demanding of our representatives that the same mistakes don't repeat the politics of past times laid out in this book. I had reservations when I first started reading it. I was afraid the author had an agenda and was trying to get me, the reader, to see things through his lens. By five pages in I realized this was not the case. The mark of a truly non partisan history book is to finish the book and have no clue what political party the author identifies with. That was the case when I finished this. And that is as it should be. The book is expertly written by an author with an obvious extensive knowledge on the subject matter and I had it read in one night. It was such a page turner that I couldn't put it down. I had 2 different judges (a family law and a criminal judge) recommend it to me and now my whole office has read it. I hope everyone that cares about learning about and not repeating history's mistakes will read this book.

55 people found this helpful

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Stephen N. Greenleaf

Vital Advice from One Who Knows

March 5, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This is a short, quick book to read, perhaps 30-45 minutes of your time. And at only $2.99 (on Kindle) you can't afford not to buy it. For those who found his list of 20 points elsewhere on the web for free, don't let that suffice. The book adds commentary to his list, and it's worth the small cost.

For those of you not acquainted with Snyder, he's a historian of Eastern Europe and has written extensively on the turmoil--the killing fields--of Eastern Europe in the 20th century. He knows whereof he speaks.

I will offer you a couple of his thoughts from his concluding remarks. In addressing what he terms "the politics of inevitability," he notes

Until recently, we Americans had convinced ourselves that there was nothing in the future but more of the same. The seemingly distant traumas of fascism, Nazism, and communism seemed to be receding into irrelevance. We allowed ourselves to accept the politics of inevitability, the sense that history could move in only one direction: toward liberal democracy. After communism in eastern Europe came to an end in 1989–91, we imbibed the myth of an “end of history.” In doing so, we lowered our defenses, constrained our imagination, and opened the way for precisely the kinds of regimes we told ourselves could never return.
Snyder, Timothy. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Kindle Locations 765-769). Crown/Archetype. Kindle Edition.

But he then addresses the converse attitude, what he calls "the politics of eternity." About this attitude, he states
In the politics of eternity, the seduction by a mythicized past prevents us from thinking about possible futures. The habit of dwelling on victimhood dulls the impulse of self-correction. Since the nation is defined by its inherent virtue rather than by its future potential, politics becomes a discussion of good and evil rather than a discussion of possible solutions to real problems. Since the crisis is permanent, the sense of emergency is always present; planning for the future seems impossible or even disloyal. How can we even think of reform when the enemy is always at the gate?
Id. at 810-815

In contrast to both of these attitudes, he places history (an encomium with which I could not agree more):
Both of these positions, inevitability and eternity, are antihistorical. The only thing that stands between them is history itself. History allows us to see patterns and make judgments. It sketches for us the structures within which we can seek freedom. It reveals moments, each one of them different, none entirely unique. To understand one moment is to see the possibility of being the cocreator of another. History permits us to be responsible: not for everything, but for something. The Polish poet Czesław Miłosz thought that such a notion of responsibility worked against loneliness and indifference. History gives us the company of those who have done and suffered more than we have.
Id. at 822-827

In his peroration, he exhorts young people especially (although it applies to all of us)

One thing is certain: If young people do not begin to make history, politicians of eternity and inevitability will destroy it. And to make history, young Americans will have to know some.

This is not the end, but a beginning. “The time is out of joint. O cursed spite,/That ever I was born to set it right!” Thus Hamlet. Yet he concludes: “Nay, come, let’s go together.”
Id. at 830-834

Buy this book and read it!

607 people found this helpful

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Vincenzo Fiorentini

Sad

February 3, 2019

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

It is really sad that a set overall reasonable (though not especially original and sometime patronizing) considerations based on 20th century history be used so blatantly as a backdrop and supposed justification for hysterical anti-Trump propaganda. I can only hope his other book I own (Bloodlands, which is next on my list) is free of such nonsense.

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