This book has been on my shelf for more than a year. I heard Anne Applebaum speak, bought the book, and kept meaning to read it. At the beginning DecemberI finally read it. It was even better than I expected.
The book covers the period from the beginning of the current century to the pandemic. She traces the rise of the authoritarian right across Europe and the world following the collapse of the Soviet Union. For the first decade democracy swept Eastern Europe. Between 1991 and 2000 the trend was toward more democracy in more places.
Then the euphoria cooled and the right wing started to rise again. In Russia the 1990s were chaos and poverty under President Boris Yeltsin. He was followed by Vladimir Putin who remains in power today.
In Hungary and Turkey, right-wing governments are creeping toward dictatorships but are already well along in stifling freedom for their citizens. By 2020, Poland was well along in establishing a religious-based right-wing government.
The UK voted for Brexit. Trump won election in 2016 and tried a dozen different ways to overthrow the 2020 election. In France fascist Marine LePen got thirty percent of the vote. A fascist-adjacent government took over in Italy and German has seen a rise in right-wing activity.
The book was published before the Russians invaded Ukraine so some of the dire trends of 2021 were stopped in 2022. Poland has become the center of shelter for Ukrainians and the transit point for NATO weapons going to Ukraine. Hungary and Turkey remain authoritarian but are suddenly marginal. Sweden and Finland are joining NATO. The NATO alliance is resurgent in the wake of Russia's invasion.
China is rapidly becoming more authoritarian and threatening Taiwan, but they are holding Russia at arms length.
Twilight of Democracy is an important book to see the how the world was moving right in recent years. I am very glad I read it.
First 46 Books of 2022:
Epigenetics: A Graphic Guide by Cath Ennis and Oliver Pugh
Life's Edge by Carl Zimmer
The Genius of Judaism by Bernard-Henri Levy
C.S.Lewis: A Very Short Introduction by James Como
English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding drama by C.S. Lewis
Le veritable histoire des petits cochons by Erik Belgard
The Iliad or the Poem of Force by Simone Weil
Game of Thrones, Book 5 by George R.R. Martin
Irony and Sarcasm by Roger Kreutz
Essential Elements by Matt Tweed
Les horloges marines de M. Berthoud
The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems by William Carlos Williams
The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
Cochrane by David Cordingly
QED by Richard Feynman
Spirits in Bondage by C.S. Lewis
Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis
The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer
The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton
If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut
The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss.
Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins
Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt
The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay
First Principles by Thomas Ricks
Political Tribes by Amy Chua
Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen
A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll
Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson
1776 by David McCullough
The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt
Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson
How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss
Unflattening by Nick Sousanis
Marie Curie by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)
The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche
Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen
