ANNE APPLEBAUM’s 2018 Atlantic article “A Warning from Europe” inspired this book and was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. After seventeen years as a columnist at The Washington Post, Applebaum became a staff writer at The Atlantic in 2020. She is the author of three critically acclaimed and award-winning histories of the Soviet Union: Red Famine, Iron Curtain, and Gulag, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
“The book to buy for insight into what Trump's rise and rule really
mean—here and abroad—for democracy in our time."
—Ron Elving, NPR
“Applebaum’s historical expertise and knowledge of contemporary
Europe and the United States illuminate what is eternal and
distinctive about the political perils facing us today . . .
Twilight of Democracy offers many lessons on the long-standing
struggle between democracy and dictatorship. But perhaps the most
important is how fragile democracy is: Its survival depends on
choices made every day by elites and ordinary people.”
—Sheri Berman, Washington Post
“An often sobering, sometimes shocking, but never despairing
account of the rise of authoritarianism in the West.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“Anne Applebaum is a leading historian of communism and a
penetrating investigator of contemporary politics. Here she sets
her sights on the big question, one with which she herself has been
deeply engaged in both Europe and America: How did our democracy go
wrong? This extraordinary document, written with urgency,
intelligence, and understanding, is her answer.”
—Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny
“Friendships torn. Ideals betrayed. Alliances broken. In this, her
most personal book, a great historian explains why so many of those
who won the battles for democracy or have spent their lives
proclaiming its values are now succumbing to liars, thugs, and
crooks. Analysis, reportage, and memoir, Twilight of Democracy
fearlessly tells the shameful story of a political generation gone
bad.”
—David Frum, author of Trumpocracy and Trumpocalypse
“Critically important for its muscular, oppositionist attack on the
new right from within conservative ranks—and for the
well-documented warning it embodies. Applebaum’s views are
especially welcome because she is a deliberate thinker and astute
observer rather than just the latest pundit or politico . . . A
knowledgeable, rational, necessarily dark take on dark
realities.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"In crisp, elegant prose . . . [Applebaum] describes the emotional
power of conspiracy theories and of simple narratives that
encourage national unity against a common enemy, even if that enemy
is often more imagined than real."
—Christian Science Monitor
"Thought-provoking and gracefully written."
—Gabriel Schoenfeld, The American Interest
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