Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have no doubt “On Tyranny” is a book Tim Snyder wished he didn’t have to write, in the same way, as he reminds us, that Hamlet was fated to “set things right”. No one knows the history of 20th century Germany, eastern Europe, and Russia better than prof. Snyder. He has accomplished immense scholarship in those countries and shared some of it in “Bloodlands”, “Black Earth”, scholarly papers and commentaries over the years. In measured prose, he imbues his history with the existential anguish of its victims and imparts the cold-blooded nature of the perpetrators. He quietly relates how individuals and societies have weaseled out of bearing responsibility. Personal, familial, and cultural tragedies seep into his writing and it has brought me to tears many times. Prof. Snyder knows a lot more about how tyranny takes hold and uses chance opportunity to impose itself than he can tell in a thousand or ten thousand pages. Reading his work, you can tell that the years of close reading have affected his core. Furthermore, he is very active in the contemporary eastern European culture, where recent years have not been kind to Liberal Democracy. Now, suddenly, authoritarian intolerance and anti-democratic forces are openly and aggressively imposing themselves here in the US. Clearly, he is compelled to share cautionary lessons for Enlightenment-loving, Constitution-embracing, and liberal democratic citizens of his own country… and that would be us. We, who are so unprepared to face our threat, who are traumatized and ill-equipped to recognize and react to repression have ask ourselves: “what is to be done, how can we endure this, maintain our self-respect, and resist?” In “On Tyranny”, prof. Snyder has distilled the life lessons of those countless courageous people who faced tyranny and he implies how countless more have shriveled and looked away from the horror they felt coming. This book will aide you to surf your fear and panic well enough to dispassionately lay out how authoritarian politics can modify your behavior and how to be mindful in resisting these changes. Lesson number 1 is about how a person caves into tyranny: “…individuals think ahead what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.” Fortunately, the other 19 lessons truly instruct and remind the reader about options to resist letting tyranny dominate your life. I will leave those lessons for you when you read the book. Prof. Snyder’s epilogue offers brilliant insight into the fallacies that predominate in our contemporary culture that brought us to this crisis. This is a very serious book and needs to be read a few times and shared with as many people as you can reach. It’s an inexpensive book and I recommend buying several copies and handing them out to people who need to read it. It’s a small investment for your survival as a member of a civilized and compassionate society.