Though the authorās Wikipedia page and the Wikipedia page for The Road to Unfreedom seem to suggest the author often gets mixed/ānegative reviews from other scholars. But itās hard to say what to make of that without more thoroughly checking the ratio of positive to negative reviews or actually reading the reviews. And I guess heās writing on unusually controversy-prone topics.
I think Iāll listen to the On Tyranny audiobook (since itās under 2 hours), and watch a talk from him on The Road to Unfreedom, and decide after that whether itās worth reading the full latter book or another book by him.
an academic looking at this question
I assume you mean heās looking at the topics I pointed to other than the risk of stable and/āor global authoritarianism? Or do you also know of work heās done that seems to have that specifically in mind in a level-headed way? (I say āin a level-headed wayā because Iād guess some authors will say things that sound like theyāre about stable and/āor global authoritarianism but arenāt really thought through much, and are more like hyperbole.)
Yeah I havenāt read any of his stuff, just mentioning that he works on totalitarianism and authoritarianism. Not having read The Road to Unfreedom, it looks like he identifies trends in several geographies which could be useful for the questions youāre looking at.
Iāve now listened to On Tyranny and watched a 1-hour lecture from Snyder called āThe Road to Unfreedomā (so presumably similar content to the book).
It seemed to me that most of what Snyder said was either stuff I already knew, stuff that seemed kind-of obvious or platitude-like, or stuff I was skeptical of
This might be partly due to the book On Tyranny being under 2 hours and the talk being just 1 hour, such that Snyder opted to just give a quick overview of the ābasicsā of certain things
So I do think this might be fairly useful per minute for someone who knew quite little about things like Hitler and the Soviet Union
But I wouldnāt strongly recommend these books, and would probably recommend against them for people who already know a decent amount about these topics
Though I should again note that I havenāt actually read The Road to Unfreedom; maybe the book version is better than both the talk and the other book
Thanks! Both books do sound interesting.
Though the authorās Wikipedia page and the Wikipedia page for The Road to Unfreedom seem to suggest the author often gets mixed/ānegative reviews from other scholars. But itās hard to say what to make of that without more thoroughly checking the ratio of positive to negative reviews or actually reading the reviews. And I guess heās writing on unusually controversy-prone topics.
I think Iāll listen to the On Tyranny audiobook (since itās under 2 hours), and watch a talk from him on The Road to Unfreedom, and decide after that whether itās worth reading the full latter book or another book by him.
I assume you mean heās looking at the topics I pointed to other than the risk of stable and/āor global authoritarianism? Or do you also know of work heās done that seems to have that specifically in mind in a level-headed way? (I say āin a level-headed wayā because Iād guess some authors will say things that sound like theyāre about stable and/āor global authoritarianism but arenāt really thought through much, and are more like hyperbole.)
Yeah I havenāt read any of his stuff, just mentioning that he works on totalitarianism and authoritarianism. Not having read The Road to Unfreedom, it looks like he identifies trends in several geographies which could be useful for the questions youāre looking at.
In case this info is useful to future readers:
Iāve now listened to On Tyranny and watched a 1-hour lecture from Snyder called āThe Road to Unfreedomā (so presumably similar content to the book).
It seemed to me that most of what Snyder said was either stuff I already knew, stuff that seemed kind-of obvious or platitude-like, or stuff I was skeptical of
This might be partly due to the book On Tyranny being under 2 hours and the talk being just 1 hour, such that Snyder opted to just give a quick overview of the ābasicsā of certain things
So I do think this might be fairly useful per minute for someone who knew quite little about things like Hitler and the Soviet Union
But I wouldnāt strongly recommend these books, and would probably recommend against them for people who already know a decent amount about these topics
Though I should again note that I havenāt actually read The Road to Unfreedom; maybe the book version is better than both the talk and the other book