Here are 100 books that Autocracy and Redistribution fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am a political science professor who has always been interested in authoritarian regimes, how they function, and how they control their citizens. In particular, I find it fascinating why citizens may genuinely adore and respect the (sometimes outrageous) autocrats that lead them, even though they rule with an iron fist. Additionally, the rise of authoritarianism in democracies also caught my attention. Terms like “slow-moving coups” and “insurrections” are being used when referring to democracies now. In some ways, this is shocking to me—but it’s motivated me to better understand how this happened—and the ways in which autocracies and democracies seem to be mimicking each other.
If you are still wondering how democracies fall apart, How Democracies Die, is one of the more accessibly written accounts of how, where, and why democracy is in danger. The book explains why democracies are no longer ending with a coup, but rather with a steady and slow erosion of democratic institutions. Chock-full of examples, this book highlights what the institutional guardrails are in a democracy and how these safeguards are weakened by leaders and other elected representatives (like Donald Trump, Recip Erdoğan, and Viktor Orbán, etc.), who hold little regard for democratic norms and are willing to engage in a scorched earth style of politics just to maintain power. I like that this was written for a wide audience.
'The most important book of the Trump era' The Economist
How does a democracy die? What can we do to save our own? What lessons does history teach us?
In the 21st century democracy is threatened like never before.
Drawing insightful lessons from across history - from Pinochet's murderous Chilean regime to Erdogan's quiet dismantling in Turkey - Levitsky and Ziblatt explain why democracies fail, how leaders like Trump subvert them today and what each of us can do to protect our democratic rights.
'This book looks to history to provide a guide for defending democratic norms when they are…
I have 7 sisters and 1 brother. I was the 9th child in my family. To get a son who would carry on the family heritage, my parents tried 7 times without any success. After 7 unwanted daughters, my brother finally arrived. Then they had me as the second boy in the family. The plot twist was: I am gay. I turned out to be the 8th unwanted daughter because of my sexuality. Coming from this small-town big family full of superstitions and secrets, I am naturally drawn to dramatic family stories with many dark and psychological twists.
This novel is a graphic and passionate family saga. I came from a big family and could totally relate to the story of many generations.
I read it in one math class in high school and got punished by the teacher. I clearly remember the teacher’s distorted face when he threw my book out of the window. “Could this crap be more important than math?” I said YES. Yes. Yes. Yes. A thousand yeses.
He failed me, which was fine. Allende’s magical realism allowed me to aspire to become a novelist. I did become a writer, and I would still say YES to my math teacher.
“Spectacular...An absorbing and distinguished work...The House of the Spirits with its all-informing, generous, and humane sensibility, is a unique achievement, both personal witness and possible allegory of the past, present, and future of Latin America.” —The New York Times Book Review
Our Shared Shelf, Emma Watson Goodreads Book Club Pick November/December 2020!
The House of the Spirits, the unforgettable first novel that established Isabel Allende as one of the world’s most gifted storytellers, brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political…
I became deeply interested in democracy and authoritarianism at an early age because of my experiences living under military dictatorships in Argentina in 1971-72 and in Brazil from 1980- 82, and also my experience as an undergraduate living in a democracy that failed in profound ways (Argentina, 1975). I saw first-hand that authoritarianism can affect daily life in hugely negative ways but also that democracy can fail in dismal ways. Reading and producing scholarship about democracy and authoritarianism, and teaching these subjects, became central to my immensely satisfying life’s work.
Violent Victors: Why Bloodstained Parties Win Postwar Elections addresses a fascinating, counterintuitive puzzle: how do politicians who committed mass atrocities in a civil war and their post-war parties win free and fair democratic elections? Zukerman Daly’s core argument is that these blood-stained parties and leaders sell themselves as the most credible providers of post-war peace. They get credit for ending the violence, which is a paramount concern for voters who lived through the conflict. Zukerman Daly’s brilliant book enabled me to grasp a new understanding of this surprisingly common phenomenon.
Why populations brutalized in war elect their tormentors
One of the great puzzles of electoral politics is how parties that commit mass atrocities in war often win the support of victimized populations to establish the postwar political order. Violent Victors traces how parties derived from violent, wartime belligerents successfully campaign as the best providers of future societal peace, attracting votes not just from their core supporters but oftentimes also from the very people they targeted in war.
Drawing on more than two years of groundbreaking fieldwork, Sarah Daly combines case studies of victim voters in Latin America with experimental survey…
I became deeply interested in democracy and authoritarianism at an early age because of my experiences living under military dictatorships in Argentina in 1971-72 and in Brazil from 1980- 82, and also my experience as an undergraduate living in a democracy that failed in profound ways (Argentina, 1975). I saw first-hand that authoritarianism can affect daily life in hugely negative ways but also that democracy can fail in dismal ways. Reading and producing scholarship about democracy and authoritarianism, and teaching these subjects, became central to my immensely satisfying life’s work.
Trejo and Ley’s Votes, Drugs, and Violence highlights the devastating impact of Mexico’s drug wars has had on democracy and society. The death toll from Mexico’s drug wars far exceeds the one from the dirty wars waged by South American dictators from the 1960s through the 1980s and the death toll from El Salvador’s and Peru’s civil wars of the 1980s. Paradoxically, subnational alternations in power that removed the long-standing ruling authoritarian party of 1929-2000 from power helped to fuel the drug wars, which in turn have undermined democracy and unleashed horrific human rights abuses. Votes, Drugs, and Violence gave me new insights into the origins of the dramatic escalation of criminal wars in Mexico, and it also powerfully illuminates how profoundly drug wars have undermined democracy.
One of the most surprising developments in Mexico's transition to democracy is the outbreak of criminal wars and large-scale criminal violence. Why did Mexican drug cartels go to war as the country transitioned away from one-party rule? And why have criminal wars proliferated as democracy has consolidated and elections have become more competitive subnationally? In Votes, Drugs, and Violence, Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley develop a political theory of criminal violence in weak democracies that elucidates how democratic politics and the fragmentation of power fundamentally shape cartels' incentives for war and peace. Drawing on in-depth case studies and statistical analysis…
So many of the problems we face as a society stem from the way our economy works. But the economy is presented as something technical and dry, or even simply the ‘natural state of things’. It makes it hard for people to understand where power lies, or even to imagine how it could be otherwise. If we want things to be different – and we really need things to be different – we’ve got to find better ways of communicating what’s going on. I’ve chosen some books that do this – to explain how economic decisions are made. And always to point to the possibility of it all being very different and much better.
“I hear people say we have to stop and debate globalization. You might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer.”
In 2005, Tony Blair told his party that a new, free-market, globalized form of capitalism was inevitable. Filipino theorist, activists and later politician Walden Bello begged to differ. He believed globalization was a political choice, and one that suited Western elites and their multinational corporations, at the expense of the mass of humanity.
In Deglobalization, Bello sets out to show how things could be different, imagining a more diverse international economy centred on the principle of being as democratic as possible.
How to manage the global economy - and, more fundamentally, whether humanity wishes it to go in an ever more market-oriented, transnational corporation-dominated, and capital-footloose direction - is the most important international question of our time. In this short and trenchant history of those bodies -- the World Bank, IMF, WTO, and Group of Seven -- which have promoted this economic globalization, Walden Bello:
- Points to their manifest failings;
- Examines the major new ideas put forward for reforming the management of the world economy;
- Argues for a much more fundamental shift towards a decentralized, pluralistic system of…
My interest in bureaucratic power and its pervasive control grew out of my social and feminist activity no less than from my critical thinking about State institutions. Combining field research as a social anthropologist with my activism exposed me to the harmful implications of bureaucratic power. I delved into social and gender power relations in contexts like absorption centers with immigrants from Ethiopia, women's empowerment projects in "developing" countries, threatened motherhood in the welfare state, and others. My personal experience as an involved participant enabled me to better understand the ethnocentric and exploiting nature of international development projects, of Israeli "absorbing" agencies, and of child care policies.
I "discovered" Hancock's book by coincidence in the summer of 2000, when I stayed in Oxford.
While working on my book I met a scholar who recommended me the book when he learned about my study. He thought that Hancock's book could offer me some exciting insights. Reading the book was overwhelming for me, as I found out that my "Nepali experience" in the context of a women's development project was not exceptional.
I realized then that my critical analysis gained further evidence, through elaborating on Hancock's numerous examples from other places where the World Bank and Western Capitalist agencies were involved.
Each year some sixty billion dollars are spent on foreign aid throughout the world. Whether in donations to charities such as Save the Children, Oxfam, CARE, UNICEF, or the Red Cross, in the form of enormous loans from the World Bank, or as direct payments from one government to another, the money is earmarked for the needy, for relief in natural disasters—floods or famines, earthquakes, or droughts—and for assistance in the development of nations.
The magnitude of generosity from the world’s wealthy nations suggests the possibility of easing, if not eliminating, hunger, misery, and poverty; in truth, however, only a…
In 6th grade I did a report about the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, which manifested in a career spanning more than 20 years where I’ve worked for NGOs, the State Department, and the United States Agency for International Development to help make the world a better place. I’ve lived in Guatemala, Tajikistan, Armenia, and Jordan, and travelled throughout Sub-Saharan Africa working on conflict prevention, democracy, governance, and human rights. I’m a firm believer that, no matter your profession, everyone can help make the world a better place – and that’s why I wrote my book and why I read the books on my list – to help make this a reality.
This book is like the other side of the coin to Sex and World Peace.
In that book, the authors articulate the connection between gender inequality and global suffering through statistics, whereas Half the Sky describes it in individual stories. It is moving to hear about these women’s suffering, but it is also uplifting to hear how they have overcome.
This book is an excellent resource for understanding how gender equality leads to increasing economic growth while reducing global poverty and inequality. It is an important tool in any ordinary hero’s toolkit.
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation—the oppression of women and girls in the developing world. From the bestselling authors of Tightrope,two of our most fiercely moral voices
With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world…
I've been a researcher, educator, and practitioner of domestic violence services for over 15 years, and am extremely passionate about this topic. After having worked in the domestic violence field, I then pursued my PhD to study this problem, which I now continue to research and teach about as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Moravian University. In our ever-globalizing world, I believe it's especially important for us to consider domestic violence from a cross-cultural perspective, and having studied this issue in Latin America and among Latina women in the U.S., I hope to spread that knowledge even further. More than ever, it is important for everyone to gain knowledge on this worldwide problem.
Anthropological literature is one of the best places to look to learn about issues from a cross-cultural perspective, and Dorothy Ayers Counts and Judith Brown are often credited with literally “writing the book” on domestic violence in anthropology.
Likewise, Jacquelyn Campbell is one of the foremost thinkers and systems creators when it comes to domestic violence and health services. Through this book and their earlier edition from 1992, they offered the first compilations of anthropological perspectives on domestic violence. This book demonstrates how different people around the world experience this issue so we can contemplate how it looks and is dealt with across different cultural settings.
This vitally important volume places the problem of wife beating in a broad cultural context in a search for strategies to reform societies, including our own, that are prone to this pernicious form of violence. Based on first hand ethnographic data on more than a dozen societies, including a number in Oceania, this collection explores the social and cultural factors that work either to inhibit or to promote domestic violence against women. The volume also includes a study of abuse among nonhuman primates and a cross-cultural analysis of the legal aspects of wife beating. By presenting counterexamples from other cultures,…
Today's reporter inhabits an environment ranging from hostile to apathetic. Somewhere beyond the blistering criticism and rabid mistrust is the writer's haunting suspicion that today's revelatory art will line the reader's birdcage before his or her lunchtime McChicken. I get it. My entire professional career has been spent filing Right-to-Know and other public information requests, working the phones, chasing the perfect photo, and hammering at the keyboard in the hopes of something legible. On occasion I've mined something of both meaning and impact. That's what the writers I've featured have done as well as anyone I've ever read. May you find their journalism as inspiring as I do.
Seek finds Johnson mining his own humanity through true tales of Alaskan gold prospecting and the manhunt for a serial bomber.
He loses himself in fungus at an Oregan hippie festival and searches for God at a Christian biker rally in Texas. His travels take him to the sometimes-literal frontlines of the news, including the hellish delirium of the Liberian civil war and conversations with Constitution-toting Montanans bent on the overthrow of the United States government.
Johnson's writing in this compilation of essays was absolutely searing and a revelation to me. This stuff belongs in the home library of anyone who's ever aspired to pick up the pen.
“Johnson writes with a fervor that can only be described as religious. Seek is scary and beautiful and ecstatic and uncontrolled…he elevates the mundane to the sublime; he boils things down to their essence. He’s simply one of the few writers around whose sentences make you shudder.” —Adrienne Miller, Esquire
Part political disquisition, part travel journal, part self-exploration, Seek is a collection of essays and articles in which Denis Johnson essentially takes on the world. And not an obliging, easygoing world either; but rather one in which horror and beauty exist in such proximity that they might well be interchangeable.…
After finishing my secondary education in Athens I got a degree in business administration at the University of Genova. The idea was to return to Greece to work in my father’s business. But I soon realized that I was neither interested in business theory nor going back to Greece to work in my father's organization. I decided to continue my studies in England focusing on the social sciences – first at Leicester University and then at the London School of Economics. After retiring I continued to write books and articles in Greek, English, and French. I have passion for reading and writing. It helps me psychologically as well to survive in a postmodern chaotic world.
Roxborough’s work helped me to understand better the structure and development of peripheral and semiperipheral societies.
It was particularly useful to me as a part of my work has to do with the study Latin American and Balkan Societies. I personally recommend the book very strongly. It was an excellent guide for those interested in the sociology of development and underdevelopment.
Focusing on the effects of imperialism on class structures in Third World societies, Roxborough provides a historical explanation of the similarities and differences between these societies.
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