On Tyranny

History does not repeat, but it does instruct. European history shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and people can find themselves in unimaginable circumstances. Today, we are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to totalitarianism in the twentieth century. This book deals with this topic.

The most coherent manifesto on confronting Trump… powerful.

Snyder’s beautifully weighted book is the perfect clear-eyed antidote to [Trump's] deliberate philistinism … Always measured in their observation, 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 … You will read no more relevant field guide to that wisdom than this book.

On Tyranny is 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.

Following paths trodden by Hannah Arendt, Czeslaw Milosz and Václav Havel, Snyder has written a manifesto for surviving the political rampages of our time with our rights and freedoms intact… Snyder’s book is addressed to the American reader, but its message is broader. Read in Budapest or Warsaw, it will have an especial resonance … Slim and accessible, On Tyranny is a book to read quickly, ponder slowly and pass on

Urgent, indignant, winningly ragged in execution , On Tyranny is in the best tradition of polemical pamphlets. Timely agitprop, it offers some relief from Trump anxiety disorder.

A chilling description of how authoritarian mindsets work

Steeped in the history of interwar Germany, Snyder writes with bracing immediacy about how to prevent, or at least forestall, the repression of lives and minds.

We are rapidly ripening for fascism. This American writer leaves us with no illusions about ourselves

On Tyranny will help you keep going for the next four years, or however long it takes.

He is undoubtedly a scholar of great distinction and authority … If more people follow Snyder’s injunctions to read newspapers, avoid falling for contrived online “scandals”, make friends across national boundaries and remember professional ethics then the world will indeed be a better place.

Timothy Snyder has been called ‘the leading interpreter of our dark times’. As a historian, he has given us startling reinterpretations of political collapse and mass killing. As a public intellectual, he has turned that knowledge towards counsel and prediction, working against authoritarians and populists. After a quarter century at Yale, he now teaches history at the Munk School in the University of Toronto and his books, which have been published in over forty languages, include Bloodlands, Black Earth, On Tyranny, Road to Unfreedom, Our Malady and On Freedom. His work has inspired poster campaigns and exhibitions, sculptures, a punk rock song, a rap song, a play and an opera, and he has appeared in over fifty films and documentaries.