Take responsibility for the face of the world. The individual chapters (small lessons) included in the book are: 1. Timothy Snyders New York Times bestseller On Tyranny uses the darkest moments in twentieth-century history, from Nazism to Communism, to teach twenty lessons. We need to understand things DO happen and we CAN impact the future. Finally, and this makes sense, one is historical: understand that history is not inevitable or mythical. Another is taking a risk: stand up, or at a minimum, do not surrender to the crowds or lazy thinking. Another is language and truth: seek it, pay for it, respect it. One is community: defend and participate in it. While there are 20 ideas/lessons/chapter, the book really has a couple of themes. Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker Snyder is superbly positioned to bring historical thinking to bear on the current political scene. I enjoyed all the chapters, and like in a nice restaurant with small portions, my major complaint was I was still hungry when I finished. As Timothy Snyder explains in his fine and frightening On Tyranny, a minority party now has near-total power and is therefore understandably frightened of awakening the actual will of the people. It is also meant to highlight early signs of tyranny in government and media. It isn't meant to be comprehensive, but more of a hornbook for resisting movements away from democracy and towards fascism. In easily digestible chapters (twenty, obviously) Snyder seeks to use lessons from the rise of Fascism (and Totalitarianism) to assist readers in this current moment globally.
![on tyranny timothy snyder on tyranny timothy snyder](https://www.uncommonthought.com/mtblog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/TimothySnyder_On-Tyranny.jpg)
![on tyranny timothy snyder on tyranny timothy snyder](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/jxAAAOSwc2dfdNsW/s-l640.jpg)
Snyder, the Levin professor of history at Yale, delivers a short and powerful primer on resisting fascism/tyranny in the 21st Century, using the rise of fascism in 20th Century as a guide. History does not repeat, but it does instruct.ĭr.