Here are 100 books that Rhinoceros and Other Plays fans have personally recommended if you like
Rhinoceros and Other Plays.
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Like a caricature, satire lets you see reality better by exaggerating it. When satire is done right, every element, from the overall plot to the characters to paragraph-level details, is there to cast an exposing light on some part of our real world. They are books that exist on many levels, expose hubris and essential misunderstandings, and generally speak truth to power. They should leave the reader reassessing core assumptions about how the world works. I’ve written a best-selling nonfiction book about machine learning in the past, and I probably could have taken that approach again, but AI and American politics are both ripe for satire.
This book taught me the meaning of the word “totalitarianism.” It’s like a horror movie you can’t escape from, but instead of a zombie fungus eating your mind, it’s the state controlling every little aspect of your life, down to—and worst of all—the words that you think with, and therefore what you can even conceive of.
Few books have stayed in my mind like this one. Even today—or more than ever—its images come to my mind over and over again when I see what is happening in America and the world.
1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates. In Oceania, the Party's power is absolute. Every action, word, gesture and thought is monitored under the watchful eye of Big Brother and the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Truth, the Party's department for propaganda, Winston Smith's job is to edit the past. Over time, the impulse to escape the machine and live independently takes hold of him and he embarks on a secret and forbidden love affair. As he writes the words 'DOWN WITH BIG…
I see no distinction between the personal and the political. All art is, therefore, a political act, and literature especially, since the author gets inside the reader's head. In 1984, the use of a pen is punishable, never mind having an unorthodox opinion; novels are written by machines—commodities like jam or bootlaces, to pacify the proles. (A.I. novels outcompeting human ones?) Yes, novels entertain, and that's OK, but the best way to change your outlook is to let you understand the human condition a little better. That is why I want more from a political thriller than just the same old lies, corruption, sex, and power at the heart of government.
This book made me think, reflect, and laugh (if a little unnervingly!). It is a quirky tale that warns us of threats to civil liberties from AI and corporate tech giants in a Hitch-hikers' Guide to the Galaxy meets 1984 way.
Some of the writing is lyrical and literary, sometimes perplexing and banal. I was not entirely convinced by the science behind the science-fiction elements, but that is perhaps allowed because of the Theatre of the Absurd approach the author takes.
'Fun and erudite' Sunday Times 'Snort-inducingly funny' Daily Mail 'One of the cleverest books you'll read this year' Telegraph
Every system, however immaculate, has a few little glitches.
The latest in domestic tech should have predicted that businessman George Mann was about to murder his family. But instead it crashes and leads to the wrong man being caught and punished.
Are there gremlins in digital giant Beetle's ubiquitous wearable tech, talking fridges and Dickensian droids? Have they been hacked, or is something even more sinister going on?
With the clock ticking philandering Beetle CEO Guy Matthias, conflicted national security agent…
I see no distinction between the personal and the political. All art is, therefore, a political act, and literature especially, since the author gets inside the reader's head. In 1984, the use of a pen is punishable, never mind having an unorthodox opinion; novels are written by machines—commodities like jam or bootlaces, to pacify the proles. (A.I. novels outcompeting human ones?) Yes, novels entertain, and that's OK, but the best way to change your outlook is to let you understand the human condition a little better. That is why I want more from a political thriller than just the same old lies, corruption, sex, and power at the heart of government.
I was blown away by this book: one of those books that makes you think differently about the world and stays with you. Your classical political thriller is set at the heart of government: the big cheeses and their power games; this, though, is about two ordinary (but exceptional!) young people and how the political climate of Weimar Germany and the rise of Nazism affected their lives.
I much prefer a book like this, about life and what it means to be human. The “thriller” aspect comes from your fear of what might happen and whether their love alone can pull them through. I loved the characters, both the main ones and the secondary ones.
From the bestselling author of Alone in Berlin, his acclaimed novel of a young couple trying to survive life in 1930s Germany
'Nothing so confronts a woman with the deathly futility of her existence as darning socks'
A young couple fall in love, get married and start a family, like countless young couples before them. But Lammchen and 'Boy' live in Berlin in 1932, and everything is changing. As they desperately try to make ends meet amid bullying bosses, unpaid bills, monstrous mothers-in-law and Nazi streetfighters, will love be enough?
The novel that made Hans Fallada's name as a writer,…
I see no distinction between the personal and the political. All art is, therefore, a political act, and literature especially, since the author gets inside the reader's head. In 1984, the use of a pen is punishable, never mind having an unorthodox opinion; novels are written by machines—commodities like jam or bootlaces, to pacify the proles. (A.I. novels outcompeting human ones?) Yes, novels entertain, and that's OK, but the best way to change your outlook is to let you understand the human condition a little better. That is why I want more from a political thriller than just the same old lies, corruption, sex, and power at the heart of government.
This is more your standard genre political thriller: written from the perspective of a British Prime Minister and those pulling the political strings.
I really appreciated the insights the author brings, having been an observer of government machinations and an insider of the British Labour Party. I believe it has reflections for anyone interested in understanding the fragility of democracy.
I deliberately didn't read this until after I had written my book to avoid being influenced since there are parallel warnings about how the British Establishment has a stranglehold over real power and only plays lip service to the concept of democracy.
Against the odds, former steel worker Harry Perkins has led the Labour party to a stunning victory. Now he's going to dismantle Britain's nuclear warheads, bring finance under public control and dismantle the media empires.
But the establishment isn't going down without a fight. As MI5 conspires with the city and press barons to bring Perkins down, he finds himself caught up in a no-holds-barred battle for survival.
Described as 'the political novel of the decade' when it was first published, A Very British Coup is as fresh and relevant now as it ever has been.
Throughout the forty-one years (thirty-four of them at Oxford) I spent as a university teacher, I taught a course on Communist government and politics (latterly ‘Communist and post-Communist government’). Communist-ruled systems were never less than highly authoritarian (when they became politically pluralist, they were, by definition, no longer Communist), and in some countries at particular times they were better described as totalitarian. That was notably true of Stalin’s Soviet Union, especially from the early 1930s to the dictator’s death in 1953. The books I’ve written prior to The Human Factor include The Rise and Fall of Communism and The Myth of the Strong Leader: Political Leadership in the Modern Age.
Fascism and Communism purported to explain all social and political phenomena and, on that basis, justified their authoritarian or totalitarian rule. The term ‘fascist’ tends to be loosely applied to intolerant and autocratic political behaviour, but the outstandingly lucid, and highly readable, book by Robert Paxton not only surveys fascism in practice – in Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany and in fascist movements and parties in many different countries – it also shows what its distinctive components are. What he calls the ‘mobilizing passions’ of fascism include the glorification of war and violence, expansionism, racism, a fixation on national solidarity, rejection of the legitimacy of diverse interests and values within a society, and, not least, a cult of the heroic leader, with the leader’s instincts counting for more than reasoned, evidence-based argument.
Fascism was the major political invention of the twentieth century and the source of much of its pain. How can we try to comprehend its allure and its horror? Is it a philosophy, a movement, an aesthetic experience? What makes states and nations become fascist?
Acclaimed historian Robert O. Paxton shows that in order to understand fascism we must look at it in action - at what it did, as much as what it said it was about. He explores its falsehoods and common threads; the social and political base that allowed it to prosper; its leaders and internal struggles;…
A decade ago, we could not have imagined a world where democracy would be in existential crisis. Perhaps it’s overly dramatic to think that way – I hope so – but it does seem realistic at this moment. That is why I am so passionate about wanting to defend democracy and the kind of society it makes possible and why I am so drawn to works that express that passion through artful writing and story-telling. With authoritarian and totalitarian regimes dangerously on the rise, books that demonstrate the profound inhumanity and injustice of such regimes and how they extinguish democracy and human rights are needed now more than ever.
I found this book compelling because of its chilling reminder of a lesson we apparently learned, but seem to have forgotten, from the 1930s rise of European fascism – that a robust democracy can quickly and easily, and through its own democratic processes, become a viciously fascist order.
Set in modern-day Ireland, the book beautifully weaves its political criticism through the moving story of one ordinary family caught up in the horrible transformation.
WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023 • NATIONAL BESTSELLER
"A prophetic masterpiece." — Ron Charles, Washington Post
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.
Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she…
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 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…
I'm an experimental social psychologist and Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. I grew up in Hungary, and after an adventurous escape I ended up in Sydney. I received my DPhil and DSc degrees from the University of Oxford, and I spent various periods working at Oxford, Stanford, Heidelberg, and Giessen. For my work I received the Order of Australia, as well as the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, the Alexander von Humboldt Prize, and a Rockefeller Fellowship. As somebody who experienced totalitarian communism firsthand, I am very interested in the reasons for the recent spread of totalitarian, tribal ideologies, potentially undermining Western liberalism, undoubtedly the most successful civilization in human history.
Madeleine Albright is a former US Secretary of State, and this book combines her fascinating political insights with an acute awareness of the ever-present threat of tribal ideologies turning virulent and potentially destroying liberal democracy.
She is uniquely equipped to accomplish this task. She was born in Eastern Europe, like myself, and so personally acquainted with the horrors of Fascism and totalitarianism. Her political and scholarly skills are admirably suited to offer an unparalleled fusion of deep historical insights and highly relevant political warnings.
Fascism, tribalism, and the human evolutionary propensity to identify with a tribal group and potentially lose all common sense and reason are ever-present dangers.
The rise of totalitarian ideologies and movements such as BLM, critical race theory, Antifa, and woke extremism on the left, and authoritarian quasi-fascist narratives on the right like QAnon, Proud Boys, Orban, Putin, Erdogan, and others represent equally serious challenges that transcend…
A personal and urgent examination of Fascism in the twentieth century and how its legacy shapes today's world, written by one of America's most admired public servants, the first woman to serve as U.S. secretary of state
A Fascist, observes Madeleine Albright, "is someone who claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is utterly unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use violence and whatever other means are necessary to achieve the goals he or she might have."
The twentieth century was defined by the clash between democracy and Fascism, a struggle that created uncertainty…
As a child, I read stories of courageous women and men who risked their lives for their faith, for their freedom, or for the freedom of others. Many of these stories were dark and brutal. History taught me that governments are capable of atrocities that defy understanding. Fiction stories led me to envision dark futures. But I do not enjoy stories that discourage or depress. Instead, I believe stories should display hope, faithfulness, and sacrifice. I admire the heroes of our history and I seek fiction that speaks these same truths. We need stories that inspire us to stand up, to speak out against injustice, no matter the consequences.
What leads people to join a movement? What causes a group to sacrifice freedom for power, victory, and equality? How does oppression begin?
When Ben is unable to answer a student’s question, “Why did the German people not stop the Nazis?” he devises an experiment. Would American students surrender their individuality and follow his leadership blindly? What follows quickly spirals out of control. The students and their teacher are forced to confront how a movement transforms those who become caught in its current. And some students are forced to learn the cost of daring to speak against the majority.
When Ben shows his pupils a film about the Nazis' persecution of the Jews, they can't believe it could happen. So he introduces a new disciplinary system in an attempt to shown them how powerful group pressure can be. But things get out of hand.
I’m an unusual law professor. I’ve taught constitutional law and economic analysis of law in a career spanning over three decades at two very different law schools. Most scholars view these fields as disconnected. My work, including several books and dozens of articles, demonstrates otherwise. This combined expertise helped me understand why our longstanding constitutional democracy is facing an existential crisis, why popular reform proposals won’t work, and what we must do to succeed. I wrote Parliamentary America for citizens seeking genuine solutions. My five-book list includes brilliant works cutting across myriad divides and embracing wide-ranging methodologies to ensure all citizens appreciate the importance of producing a truly thriving democracy.
I hope readers internalize this book's message: grappling with past threats to our democracy is vital in facing down future threats carrying a greater likelihood of success.
Maddow’s impressively researched book recounts the period of U.S. history corresponding to the rise of Nazism in Germany and the spread of European fascism. Her laudable goal is ensuring more citizens know the story of leading American figures—captains of industry, Congressmen, and Governors—sympathetic to Nazism and willing to undermine vital democratic norms, embrace anti-Semitism, and engage in coordinated violence to bring fascism to the U.S., and of those unsung heroes who refused to let them succeed.
Maddow rightly views education as vital to ensuring that past isn’t prologue.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Rachel Maddow traces the fight to preserve American democracy back to World War II, when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis.
“A ripping read—well rendered, fast-paced and delivered with the same punch and assurance that she brings to a broadcast. . . . The parallels to the present day are strong, even startling.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)
Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American…
