Revenge of Power: How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century

The Revenge of Power: How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century

By Moisés Naím

Named one of the New Yorker's Best Books of 2022 "An authoritative and intelligent portrait of the global spread of authoritarianism and its dangers. . . what sets [this] work apart from books like Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny and Michiko Kakutani's The Death of Truth is its unusually comprehensive armada of facts about the international drift over the past two decades toward authoritarian leaders, whether old-style dictators like Kim Jong Un or nominally elected presidents like Vladimir Putin.

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Book Information

Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publish Date: 02/22/2022
Pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9781250279200
ISBN-10: 1250279208
Language: English

What We're Saying

February 25, 2022

Democracy is under assault, not only in Ukraine but around the world. Moisés Naím opens up the autocrats' playbook to explain how they subvert democracy after claiming its mantle using a mixture of populism, polarization, and post-truth, and what is at stake if we fail to recognize what's happening and protect our freedoms. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

Full Description

Named one of the New Yorker's Best Books of 2022

"An authoritative and intelligent portrait of the global spread of authoritarianism and its dangers...what sets [this] work apart from books like Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny and Michiko Kakutani's The Death of Truth is its unusually comprehensive armada of facts about the international drift over the past two decades toward authoritarian leaders, whether old-style dictators like Kim Jong Un or nominally elected presidents like Vladimir Putin." --Kirkus

An urgent, thrilling, and original look at the future of democracy that illuminates one of the most important battles of our time: the future of freedom and how to contain and defeat the autocrats mushrooming around the world.
In his bestselling book The End of Power, Moisés Naím examined power-diluting forces. In The Revenge of Power, Naím turns to the trends, conditions, technologies and behaviors that are contributing to the concentration of power, and to the clash between those forces that weaken power and those that strengthen it. He concentrates on the three "P"s--populism, polarization, and post-truths. All of which are as old as time, but are combined by today's autocrats to undermine democratic life in new and frightening ways. Power has not changed. But the way people go about gaining it and using it has been transformed. The Revenge of Power is packed with alluring characters, riveting stories about power grabs and losses, and vivid examples of the tricks and tactics used by autocrats to counter the forces that are weakening their power. It connects the dots between global events and political tactics that, when taken together, show a profound and often stealthy transformation in power and politics worldwide. Using the best available data and insights taken from recent research in the social sciences, Naím reveals how, on close examination, the same set of strategies to consolidate power pop up again and again in places with vastly different political, economic, and social circumstances, and offers insights about what can be done to ensure that freedom and democracy prevail. The outcomes of these battles for power will determine if our future will be more autocratic or more democratic. Naím addresses the questions at the heart of the matter: Why is power concentrating in some places while in others it is fragmenting and degrading? And the big question: What is the future of freedom?

About the Author

Moisés Naím is a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an internationally syndicated columnist. He served as editor in chief of Foreign Policy , as Venezuela's trade minister, and as executive director of the World Bank.

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