Synopses & Reviews
Review
"Equal parts memoir, reportage, and history, [a] sobering account of the roots and forms of today's authoritarianism, by one of its most accomplished observers....A knowledgeable, rational, necessarily dark take on dark realities." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
Review
"This anguished and forceful jeremiad crystallizes right-of-center dismay at the betrayal of the conservative tradition." Publishers Weekly
Review
"With this latest work, renowned historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Applebaum issues a clarion call about the current state of democracies....Highly recommended; the currency of this work is both engrossing and petrifying." Library Journal (Starred Review)
Review
"The book to buy for insight into what Trump's rise and rule really mean — here and abroad — for democracy in our time." Ron Elving, NPR
Review
"Friendships torn. Ideals betrayed. Alliances broken. In this, her most personal book, a great historian explains why so many of those who won the battles for democracy or have spent their lives proclaiming its values are now succumbing to liars, thugs, and crooks. Analysis, reportage, and memoir, Twilight of Democracy fearlessly tells the shameful story of a political generation gone bad." David Frum, author of Trumpocracy and Trumpocalypse
Review
"Anne Applebaum is a leading historian of communism and a penetrating investigator of contemporary politics. Here she sets her sights on the big question, one with which she herself has been deeply engaged in both Europe and America: How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document, written with urgency, intelligence, and understanding, is her answer." Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny
Review
"An often sobering, sometimes shocking, but never despairing account of the rise of authoritarianism in the West." Los Angeles Review of Books
Synopsis
Named a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by The Washington Post and The Financial Times
How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document . . . is Applebaum's answer. --Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny
A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity, why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward nationalism and authoritarianism.
From the United States and Britain to continental Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege, while authoritarianism is on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum, an award-winning historian of Soviet atrocities who was one of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West, explains the lure of nationalism and autocracy. In this captivating essay, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else.
Despotic leaders do not rule alone; they rely on political allies, bureaucrats, and media figures to pave their way and support their rule. The authoritarian and nationalist parties that have arisen within modern democracies offer new paths to wealth or power for their adherents. Applebaum describes many of the new advocates of illiberalism in countries around the world, showing how they use conspiracy theory, political polarization, social media, and even nostalgia to change their societies.
Elegantly written and urgently argued, Twilight of Democracy is a brilliant dissection of a world-shaking shift and a stirring glimpse of the road back to democratic values.
About the Author
Anne Applebaum's 2018 Atlantic article "A Warning from Europe" inspired this book and was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. After seventeen years as a columnist at The Washington Post, Applebaum became a staff writer at The Atlantic in 2020. She is the author of three critically acclaimed and award-winning histories of the Soviet Union: Red Famine, Iron Curtain, and Gulag, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.