This gem of a little book - only 126 pages, which I read in one sitting - paints that peril vividly, rather like the pamphleteers of colonial America.Īmericans are not a philosophic people, but Snyder chances the philosophic approach, that is, he discusses ideas - the ideas undergirding American Democracy and lying invisible behind our peril that, because they’ve become “normalized” (a term Snyder doesn’t use), we don’t recognize them. First step in saving ourselves is understanding our peril. Tyranny lies ahead, he holds - if we do not save ourselves. The author, Timothy Snyder, leads with “tyranny” for good reason: Alarmed at the deteriorating state of American democracy - he published this book, On Tyranny, in 2017, first year of the presidency of proto-tyrant Donald Trump - he wants to return us to first principles, including first terms. But this author, a historian, ratifies his use of the term by reaching back to America’s early history: The Founding Fathers themselves used the term “tyranny” - in reference to throwing off the rule of England’s King George, arguing the Federalist Papers, debating the U.S. “Tyranny” may, in a book’s title, seem “too much”: too grand, too archaic, too extreme.
Fourth in an ongoing series, Books for Our Times
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