I also just stumbled upon your review and notes on the book How Democracy Ends, and found the review and notes interesting, so that book is now also on my list of things to consider reading. So thanks for that post :)
Though the author’s Wikipedia page and the Wikipedia page for The Road to Unfreedom seem to suggest the author often gets mixed/negative reviews from other scholars. But it’s 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 he’s writing on unusually controversy-prone topics.
I think I’ll listen to the On Tyranny audiobook (since it’s under 2 hours), and watch a talk from him on The Road to Unfreedom, and decide after that whether it’s worth reading the full latter book or another book by him.
an academic looking at this question
I assume you mean he’s looking at the topics I pointed to other than the risk of stable and/or global authoritarianism? Or do you also know of work he’s done that seems to have that specifically in mind in a level-headed way? (I say “in a level-headed way” because I’d guess some authors will say things that sound like they’re about stable and/or global authoritarianism but aren’t really thought through much, and are more like hyperbole.)
Yeah I haven’t 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 you’re looking at.
I’ve now listened to On Tyranny and watched a 1-hour lecture from Snyder called “The Road to Unfreedom” (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 “basics” 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 wouldn’t 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 haven’t actually read The Road to Unfreedom; maybe the book version is better than both the talk and the other book
I imagine what you have in mind is Caplan’s chapter on The Totalitarian Threat, which I mentioned in another comment. I’d definitely recommend that to people who haven’t read it and are interested in this bundle of topics.
Timothy Snyder is an academic looking at this question who has written several books on the topic, e.g. this and this.
I also just stumbled upon your review and notes on the book How Democracy Ends, and found the review and notes interesting, so that book is now also on my list of things to consider reading. So thanks for that post :)
Thanks! Both books do sound interesting.
Though the author’s Wikipedia page and the Wikipedia page for The Road to Unfreedom seem to suggest the author often gets mixed/negative reviews from other scholars. But it’s 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 he’s writing on unusually controversy-prone topics.
I think I’ll listen to the On Tyranny audiobook (since it’s under 2 hours), and watch a talk from him on The Road to Unfreedom, and decide after that whether it’s worth reading the full latter book or another book by him.
I assume you mean he’s looking at the topics I pointed to other than the risk of stable and/or global authoritarianism? Or do you also know of work he’s done that seems to have that specifically in mind in a level-headed way? (I say “in a level-headed way” because I’d guess some authors will say things that sound like they’re about stable and/or global authoritarianism but aren’t really thought through much, and are more like hyperbole.)
Yeah I haven’t 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 you’re looking at.
In case this info is useful to future readers:
I’ve now listened to On Tyranny and watched a 1-hour lecture from Snyder called “The Road to Unfreedom” (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 “basics” 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 wouldn’t 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 haven’t actually read The Road to Unfreedom; maybe the book version is better than both the talk and the other book
There’s also a chapter in Global Catastrophic Risks on the topic, though I forget who wrote it
I imagine what you have in mind is Caplan’s chapter on The Totalitarian Threat, which I mentioned in another comment. I’d definitely recommend that to people who haven’t read it and are interested in this bundle of topics.