Reading List: 5 Must Reads for 2025

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder

• Published in 2017

• “Mr. Snyder is a rising public intellectual unafraid to make bold connections between past and present.” - The New York Times

• “With Twenty Lessons, Snyder draws from the darkest hours of the twentieth century to provide hope for the twenty-first. As he writes, ‘Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism and communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.’” (Excerpt from Goodreads summary)

Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen

• Published in 2020

• “A reckoning with what has been lost in the past few years and a map forward with our beliefs intact.” - Interview

• “Gessen shows us that having the language to understand what is happening is the first step in surviving, and ultimately resisting, an autocratic future.” - NPR

• “This incisive book provides an indispensable overview of the calamitous trajectory of the past few years. Gessen not only highlights the corrosion of the media, the judiciary, and the cultural norms we hoped would save us but also tells us the story of how a short few years have changed us, from a people who saw ourselves as a nation of immigrants to a populace haggling over a border wall, heirs to a degraded sense of truth, meaning, and possibility. Surviving Autocracy is an inventory of ravages but also a beacon to recovery--or to enduring, and resisting, an ongoing assault.” (Excerpt from Goodreads summary)

Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum

• Published in 2020

• "How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document ... is Applebaum's answer."—Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny

• “Across the world today, from the Americas to Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege while populism and nationalism are on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum offers an unexpected explanation: that there is a deep and inherent appeal to authoritarianism, to strongmen, and, especially, to one-party rule--that is, to political systems that benefit true believers, or loyal soldiers, or simply the friends and distant cousins of the Leader, to the exclusion of everyone else...Drawing on reporting in Spain, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, and Brazil; using historical examples including Stalinist central Europe and Nazi Germany; and investigating related phenomena: the modern conspiracy theory, nostalgia for a golden past, political polarization, and meritocracy and its discontents, Anne Applebaum brilliantly illuminates the seduction of totalitarian thinking and the eternal appeal of the one-party state.” (Excerpt from Goodreads summary)

Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World by Anne Applebaum

• Published in 2024

• “A masterful guide to the new age of authoritarianism... clear-sighted and fearless.”—John Simpson, The Guardian

• “All of us have in our minds a cartoon image of what an autocratic state looks like, with a bad man at the top. But in the 21st century, that cartoon bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad guy, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, security services and professional propagandists.” (Excerpt from Goodreads summary)

On Freedom by Timothy Synder

• Published in 2024

• “We hear of freedom, but do we grasp it? In these hard times for liberty, On Freedom offers a deep inquiry arising from a diversity of perspectives. It makes the case that freedom, once explored and understood, is the way forward to good government. We are all fortunate that Timothy Snyder has shown us the way.” - Volodymyr Zelens’kyi, president of Ukraine

• “...Everyone who cares about freedom — what it means and what it takes to preserve it — should read this book.” - Anne Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy

• “Freedom is the great American commitment, but as Snyder argues, we have lost sight of what it means—and this is leading us into crisis. Too many of us look at freedom as the absence of state. We think we're free if we can do and say as we please, and protect ourselves from government overreach. But true freedom isn’t so much freedom from, as freedom to—the freedom to thrive, to take risks for futures we choose by working together. Freedom is the value that makes all other values possible. On Freedom takes us on a thrilling intellectual journey. Drawing on the work of philosophers and political dissidents, conversations with contemporary thinkers, and his own experiences coming of age in a time of American exceptionalism, Snyder identifies the practices and attitudes—the habits of mind—that will allow us to design a government in which we and future generations can flourish.” (Excerpt from Goodreads summary)