Social Justice Book Club: On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder (Virtual)

Our December title will be On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come. Copies will be available at the Library, or read it on the Palace Project or Libby app.

Timothy Snyder is one of the world’s leading historians and a prominent public intellectual in the United States and Europe. An expert on Eastern Europe and on the Second World War, he has written acclaimed and prize-winning books about twentieth-century European history, as well as political manifestos and analyses about the rise of tyranny in the contemporary world. He serves as the Levin Professor of History and Public Affairs at Yale University and is the faculty advisor of the Fortunoff Archive for Holocaust Video Testimonies.