By diagnosing the varieties of tyranny from erotic voluptuaries like Nero, the steely determination of reforming conquerors like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar and modernizing despots such as Napoleon and Ataturk to the collectivist revolutions of the Jacobins, Bolsheviks, Nazis, and Khmer Rouge, Newell shows how tyranny is every bit as dangerous to free democratic societies today as it was in the past. Newell traces the lines of influence from Machiavelli's new science of politics to the rise of Atlanticist republicanism in England and America, as well as the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century and their effects on the present. The turning point is Machiavelli's call for the conquest of nature. Newell demonstrates a historical shift in emphasis from the classical thinkers' stress on the virtuous character of rulers and the need for civic education to the modern emphasis on impersonal institutions and cold-blooded political method. Newell argues that modern tyranny and statecraft differ fundamentally from the classical understanding. This is the first comprehensive exploration of ancient and modern tyranny in the history of political thought. But when the political order seems imperilled, our advantage is that we can learn from their experience to resist the advance of tyranny. Today, we are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to totalitarianism in the twentieth century.
History can familiarise, and it can warn. European history shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary people can find themselves in unimaginable circumstances. These were movements in which a leader or a party claimed to give voice to the people, promised to protect them from global existential threats, and rejected reason in favour of myth. In the twentieth century, European democracies collapsed into fascism, Nazism and communism.
**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** ‘A sort of survival book, a sort of symptom-diagnosis manual in terms of losing your democracy and what tyranny and authoritarianism look like up close’ Rachel Maddow 'These 128 pages are a brief primer in every important thing we might have learned from the history of the last century, and all that we appear to have forgotten' Observer History does not repeat, but it does instruct.
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