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76
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
68/100Critics
65/100Scholars
95/100Author:
Masha Gessen
Publisher:
Riverhead Books
Date:
June 2, 2020
The New Yorker writer and National Book Award-winning author of The Future Is History (2017) reveals the damage the Trump administration done to the U.S. institutions and cultural norms Americans thought would protect democracy and offers advice for navigating these challenging times.
What The Reviewers Say
It echoes analyses and arguments from other Trump books that probe more deeply into particular arenas, yet it is not redundant; this book does not repeat as much as it distills. The result is almost the Platonic ideal of the anti-Trump Trump book, as though manufactured in a lab to affirm every suspicion, stoke every fear and answer every question by those readers desperately seeking a 'recovery from Trumpism,' as Gessen writes. The book’s implied 'we,' though sometimes encompassing the nation in full, is usually limited to the horrified. And those who are horrified by Trump will find that Surviving Autocracy is a time capsule packed with all their anxieties, and all their certainties, too. It offers discomfort and reassurance at once.
When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen.
A relatively slim yet potent book, Surviving Autocracy is an essential read for anyone who says that all politicians are the same.
During the past few years of Donald Trump’s deranged presidency, if there is one writer I turn to it is Masha Gessen, whose piercing clarity is gemlike and refusal to equivocate precious.
