Anne Applebaum

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author, professor, and historian offers an expert guide to understanding the appeal of the strongman as a leader and an explanation for why authoritarianism is back with a menacing twenty-first century twist. Across the world today, from the Americas to Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege while populism and nationalism are on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum offers an unexpected explanation: that there is a deep and inherent appeal to authoritarianism, to strongmen, and, especially, to one-party rule--that is, to political systems that benefit true believers, or loyal soldiers, or simply the friends and distant cousins of the Leader, to the exclusion of everyone else. People, she argues, are not just ideological; they are also practical, pragmatic, opportunistic. They worry about their families, their houses, their careers. Some political systems offer them possibilities, and others don't. In particular, the modern authoritarian parties that have arisen within democracies today offer the possibility of success to people who do not thrive in the meritocratic, democratic, or free-market competition that determines access to wealth and power. Drawing on reporting in Spain, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, and Brazil; using historical examples including Stalinist central Europe and Nazi Germany; and investigating related phenomena: the modern conspiracy theory, nostalgia for a golden past, political polarization, and meritocracy and its discontents, Anne Applebaum brilliantly illuminates the seduction of totalitarian thinking and the eternal appeal of the one-party state.

The Seductive Lure of the Authoritarian State

Twilight of Democracy

Chronicles the history of the Soviet concentration camp system from its start after the Russian Revolution to its collapse, discussing its creation and the way of life for those who lived there.

A History

Gulag

From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag and Iron Curtain, a finalist for the National Book Award, a revelatory history of Stalin's greatest crime In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization in effect a second Russian revolution which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history. At least 5 million people perished between 1931 and 1933 in the USSR. In the Red Famine, Anne Applebaum reveals for the first time that 3 million of them died not because they were accidental victims of a bad policy but because the state deliberately set out to kill them. Applebaum proves what has long been suspected: that Stalin set out to exterminate a vast swath of the Ukrainian population and replace them with more cooperative Russian-speaking peasants. A peaceful Ukraine would provide the Soviets with a safe buffer between itself and Europe and would be a bread-basket region to feed Soviet cities and factory workers. When the province rebelled against collectivization, Stalin sealed the borders and began systematic food seizures. Starving, people ate anything: grass, tree bark, dogs, corpses. In some cases they killed one another for food. Devastating and definitive, Red Famine captures the horror of ordinary people struggling to survive extraordinary evil."

Stalin's War on Ukraine, 1921-1933

Red Famine

the crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956

Iron curtain

Autocracy Inc

Examines the past and present of the Eastern European borderlands, now emerging from Soviet rule, describing the rich variety of cultures, religions, and national aspirations of the area's inhabitants as they attempt to construct a future based on ancient ancestral legacies.

Across the Borderlands of Europe

Between East and West

the Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

Ocaso de la Democrácia : la Seducción Del Autoritarismo / Twilight of Democrac y

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by The Washington Post and The Financial Times • "How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document ... is Applebaum's answer." —Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny A Pulitzer Prize–winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity, why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward nationalism and authoritarianism. From the United States and Britain to continental Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege, while authoritarianism is on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum, an award-winning historian of Soviet atrocities who was one of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West, explains the lure of nationalism and autocracy. In this captivating essay, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else. Elegantly written and urgently argued, Twilight of Democracy is a brilliant dissection of a world-shaking shift and a stirring glimpse of the road back to democratic values.

The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

Czerwony glod

A Cortina de Ferro

The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends

In the long-awaited National Book Award--shortlisted follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize--winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Central Europe after WW II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. At the end of WW II, the Soviet Union, to its surprise and delight, found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Central Europe. It set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to a completely new political and moral system: Communism. Iron Curtain describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created, and what daily life was like once they were completed. Applebaum draws on newly opened European archives and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief, rendered worthless their every qualification, and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality and strange aethestics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of this book.

The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956

Iron Curtain

паутина Большого террора

ГУЛАГ

A historiadora e vencedora do Prêmio Pulitzer explica, com clareza cruciante, por que as elites democráticas de todo o mundo estão se voltando para o nacionalismo e o autoritarismo. Eleito o Livro do Ano pelo The Washigton Post e pelo The Financial Times. Dos Estados Unidos e Grã-Bretanha à Europa continental, Ásia e América do Sul, as democracias liberais estão em risco, enquanto o autoritarismo está em ascensão. Em O crepúsculo da democracia, Anne Applebaum, ganhadora do Prêmio Pulitzer e uma das primeiras jornalistas a soar o alarme das tendências antidemocráticas no Ocidente, expõe o magnetismo do nacionalismo e da autocracia. Ela afirma que sistemas políticos com crenças radicalmente simples são por natureza atraentes, sobretudo quando beneficiam os que são leais a eles e excluem todos os demais. Anne Applebaum afirma que "Os autoritários precisam de pessoas para promover tumultos ou iniciar golpes. Mas também de pessoas que saibam usar uma sofisticada linguagem legal, capazes de afirmar que ir contra a Constituição ou distorcer as leis é a coisa certa a fazer. Eles precisam de pessoas que deem voz às queixas, manipulem os descontentamentos, canalizem a raiva e o medo e imaginem um futuro diferente". Os partidos autoritários e nacionalistas que surgiram no interior das democracias modernas oferecem novas trajetórias para a riqueza e para aqueles que aderem a eles. Anne Applebaum descreve alguns dos novos defensores do iliberalismo em vários países e demonstra como eles usam teorias da conspiração, polarização política, mídias sociais e alguma nostalgia para mudar a sociedade. Ao dissecar de maneira brilhante as mudanças que têm abalado o mundo, O crepúsculo da democracia traz uma discussão urgente e um vislumbre fundamental do caminho de retorno aos valores democráticos.

O crepúsculo da democracia

Zmierzch demokracji. Zwodniczy powab autorytaryzmu

Danielle Crittenden

Collects ninety Polish recipes, including roasted winter vegetables, stewed beef rolls with kasha, pork lion stuffed with prunes, and fruit pierogi.

90 Recipes for the Ultimate Comfort Food

From a Polish Country House Kitchen

Collects the writings of a diverse group of people who survived imprisonment in the Gulag, recounting their experiences and relationships, and offering insight into the psychological aspects of life in the camps.

Anne Applebaum

About

Books

Join the club