I have been a professor of politics and law for decades, first at Harvard and then Oxford, and so on; I spent these decades trying to understand what makes democracy work. I think we’ve been focusing on the wrong things, and as a political and legal theorist, I want to help us think about a better way forward—one we can carve for ourselves every day of our lives.
I wrote
How to Be a Citizen: Learning to Be Civil Without the State
I loved Bruce Ackerman’s recent book because he is also a professor of constitutional law reflecting on the state of democracy today but in an existential way, looking laterally at possible solutions to our political problems. Our starting points are similar, but proposed solutions different and complementary—I learned a tremendous amount from this book.
I was impressed by Tim Snyder’s ability to distill decades of academic knowledge of dictatorship and autocracy into very important but simple lessons that we need to pay attention to now and always.
An historian, Tim Snyder, is astute at identifying the legal ‘slides’ used by autocrats to gradually move democratic countries into non-democratic configurations. This is the
kind of book I wish were in the required section of high school reading lists.
'A sort of survival book, a sort of symptom-diagnosis manual in terms of losing your democracy and what tyranny and authoritarianism look like up close' Rachel Maddow
'These 128 pages are a brief primer in every important thing we might have learned from the history of the last century, and all that we appear to have forgotten' Observer
History does not repeat, but it does instruct.
In the twentieth century, European democracies collapsed into fascism, Nazism and communism. These were movements in which a leader or a party claimed to give voice to the people, promised…
Trapped in her enormous, devout Catholic family in 1963, Annie creates a hilarious campaign of lies when the pope dies and their family friend, Cardinal Stefanucci, is unexpectedly on the shortlist to be elected the first American pope.
Driven to elevate her family to the holiest of holy rollers in…
I find Sam’s book imperative: love it or hate it, praise it or criticize it; Sam gets us to think seriously about culture and identity as he opens an important debate for our complex democracies to engage with. I taught with Sam at Harvard and never ceased to be amazed by his profound understanding of the world. We may disagree with him, but he certainly gets us talking.
As people increasingly define themselves by ethnicity or religion, the West will find itself more and more at odds with non-western civilizations that reject its ideals of democracy, human rights, liberty, the rule of law, and the separation of the church and the state. Huntington feels that the fundamental source of conflict in the post-Cold War period will not be primarily ideological or economic, but cultural. Picturing a future of accelerated conflict and increasingly "de-westernized" international relations, he argues for greater understanding of non-western civilizations and offers strategies for maximizing western influence, by promoting co-operative relations with Russia and Japan,…
I found Anne Applebaum’s book a pleasure to read; it drew me in quickly with its unique, anecdotal style, as her amazing detail shocks and frightens us: it’s an essential, firsthand account of how easy it is for democracy to be threatened, and why we must pay attention to this creeping reality.
The celebrated historian and journalist uncovers the networks trying to destroy the democratic world
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. The members of these networks are connected not only within a given country, but among many countries. The corrupt, state-controlled companies in one dictatorship do business with…
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.
The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on…
I really appreciate David Runciman’s clear, erudite presentation of history’s legal and political thinkers—both men and women. This is my new go-to text for teaching and for reminding ourselves of the giants’ shoulders we stand on. We are invited to look critically at their ideas and engage with them in dialogue. Like his podcasts, it is a wonderfully accessible history.
'A splendid book: economical, invigorating and surprising' The Times
'He has that gift, both as a podcaster and as a writer, to illuminate abstruse and abstract ideas with human charm' Observer
In this bold new follow-up to Confronting Leviathan, David Runciman unmasks modern politics and reveals the great men and women of ideas behind it.
What can Samuel Butler's ideas teach us about the oddity of how we choose to organise our societies? How did Frederick Douglass not only expose the horrors of slavery, but champion a new approach to abolishing it? Why should we tolerate snobbery, betrayal and hypocrisy,…
We believe that rules and laws are in place to protect us. They are what keep our societies from descending into chaos. Without them, how would we know right from wrong, live comfortably in our communities, and be good neighbors to one another?
I always believed in the strength of the law—I spent my career in some of the most fractured, war-torn corners of the world, reading and writing constitutions to help fix society. But as I sat alone in a sandbagged trailer in Baghdad after a rocket attack, I admitted what I had been denying for years: a good society cannot be imposed from above. I lay out six ideas to help us build small societies of our own.
Love and War in the Jewish Quarter
by
Dora Levy Mossanen,
A breathtaking journey across Iran where war and superstition, jealousy and betrayal, and passion and loyalty rage behind the impenetrable walls of mansions and the crumbling houses of the Jewish Quarter.
Against the tumultuous background of World War II, Dr. Yaran will find himself caught in the thrall of the…
Winner of the Robert F. Lucid Award for Mailer Studies.
Celebrating Mailer's centenary and the seventy-fifth publication of The Naked and the Dead, the book illustrates how Mailer remains a provocative presence in American letters.
From the debates of the nation's founders, to the revolutionary traditions of western romanticism,…