Twilight of Democracy

Applebaum’s reflections on the anti-democratic pandemic sweeping our world offer an extraordinary mix of personal witness and dispassionate historical analysis…. It’s unlikely that anyone will ever give us more sensitive or revealing insights on this question – John Connelly * New Statesman *Heretics make the best writers. … Applebaum can bring a candle into the darkness of the populist right … her writing is an arsenal that stores the sharpest weapons to hand. – Nick Cohen * Observer *Applebaum’s progress …has yielded an enviable supply of raw material for her narrative. She mines her sources doggedly….Twilight of Democracy is a rather penetrating work of ethnography – Trevor Phillips * The Times *Advancing her arguments with eloquence and personal testimony, Applebaum passionately decries the corrosion of liberal, open-society values in the last three decades. – Chris Patten * Project Syndicate *written with deep insight, experience and wisdom. Definitely a very important book for understanding our troubled times and the fragility of our democracies – Elif Shafak * Daily Mail *Anne Applebaum’s Twilight of Democracy is the most important non-fiction book of the year because it asks the most urgent question: why is the right wing in the West moving so far to the right? Why is it, at this point in history, so drawn to authoritarianism? Why has it given up on democracy?’ – David Hare * New Statesman Books of the Year *this engrossing account … is a political book; it is also intensely personal, and the more powerful for it. – John Kampfner * Guardian *Applebaum, long an authority on the abuses of Communist and post-Communist Eastern Europe, in her new book Twilight of Democracy is unsparing in exposing the moral bankruptcy of Trumpian Republicanism. Her sharp pen is as persuasive as any in presenting the idea of the “west” as a morally serious project-and one whose loss we may come to mourn. – The world’s top 50 thinkers 2020 * Prospect *A brilliant writer who sheds light on the most disturbing political phenomenon of our era: the rise of rightwing authoritarianism around the world… a cry of alarm and a call to arms…. We have been warned. – Martin Wolf * Financial Times *readable, eloquent and passionate … Applebaum knows what the enemy looks like from the inside, and how it thinks. This book may only be a start. We should cherish her. I think she has a lot more she can tell us. – Francis Beckett * The New European *

Anne Applebaum is the author of Gulag: A History, which won the Pulitzer Prize, of Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956, which won the Cundill Prize, of Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine which won the Lionel Gelber and Duff Cooper prizes, and of the best-selling Twilight of Democracy. She is a columnist for The Atlantic and a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University. She divides her time between Britain, Poland and the USA.

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