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  • Published: 28 June 2020
  • ISBN: 9780241419724
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 224

Twilight of Democracy

The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends





The Pulitzer prize-winning historian and journalist anatomizes the personal and ideological dimensions of the current appeal of authoritarian regimes

A FINANCIAL TIMES, ECONOMIST AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020

'How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document, written with urgency, intelligence and understanding, is her answer' Timothy Snyder

In the years just before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, people from across the political spectrum in Europe and America celebrated a great achievement, felt a common purpose and, very often, forged personal friendships. Yet over the following decades the euphoria evaporated, the common purpose and centre ground gradually disappeared, extremism rose once more and eventually - as this book compellingly relates - the relationships soured too.

Anne Applebaum traces this history in an unfamiliar way, looking at the trajectories of individuals caught up in the public events of the last three decades. When politics becomes polarized, which side do you back? If you are a journalist, an intellectual, a civic leader, how do you deal with the re-emergence of authoritarian or nationalist ideas in your country? When your leaders appropriate history, or pedal conspiracies, or eviscerate the media and the judiciary, do you go along with it?

Twilight of Democracy is an essay that combines the personal and the political in an original way and brings a fresh understanding to the dynamics of public life in Europe and America, both now and in the recent past.

  • Published: 28 June 2020
  • ISBN: 9780241419724
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 224

About the author

Anne Applebaum

Anne Applebaum studied Russian history and literature at Yale and International Relations at the London School of Economics and St Antony's College, Oxford. She has been a writer for the Economist and foreign and deputy editor at the Spectator, and columnist for the Evening Standard and Sunday Telegraph. She is now a columnist and a member of the editorial board of the Washington Post.

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