On Tyranny Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

I think he's a really important person talking about where tyranny goes and stuff like that. I read a lot more nonfiction. I should read more fiction. And I'm sorry, I'm going to give one more.

we will obey in advance.

On Tyranny, 20 Lessons from the Twentieth Century, which is a mandatory reading that you must do before watching The Rachel Maddow Show in any regular way.

On Tyranny, 20 Lessons from the Twentieth Century, which is mandatory reading that you must do before watching The Rachel Maddow Show in any regular way.

He is the author of On Tyranny, On Freedom and More.

I read the book when it first came out, it's been on the bestseller list for a long time.

It's a short book about an hour read, go get it, we'll link to it in the show notes, it's got 20 lessons that you can easily consume.

It's reminded that democracy has to be an activity acting in such a way that we might get better outcomes.

It's really a manual. It's a political pamphlet that gives advice drawing from history but as much it's also a case for history that there's a whole lot of wisdom that remains from the confrontation with Communism or the confrontation with fascism or with other kinds of authoritarianism and that that wisdom is accessible to us if we just accept that we need it and look back and learn from others, that's the advantage.

a lot of what the book on tyranny is trying to propose is that how we carve up the time in our days and have a great influence on how we think about the politics of the world how much influence we think we actually have if we can manage to do little dumb things like spend an hour or less on the internet every day and subscribe to newspapers then that unbelievably elementary habit of picking up a newspaper at the doorstep can make us feel more connected and more active in the world

I read the book when it first came out, it's been on the bestseller list for a long time.

It's a short book about an hour read, go get it, we'll link to it in the show notes, it's got 20 lessons that you can easily consume.

It comes out of two times. It comes out of my whole adult life and then it comes out of that specific moment which I wanted to react to quickly.

It's not so much me being smart. The book is my trying to recall other people who are smarter than we are at more difficult moment.

That's why that's lesson number one in On Tyranny is don't obey in advance because if we accept that this shock is going to overwhelm us and we're just now going to take whatever happens every day is normal then we're done then we don't have a chance.

I'll discuss that and more with Timothy Snyder who wrote the book on tyranny

Timothy Snyder ... whose books on the subject include on tyranny

Timothy Snyder ... whose books on the subject include on tyranny and on freedom.

Timothy, in that book on tyranny which has sold an enormous amount of copies since that first Trump administration, there's a line about not obeying in advance that often gets quoted.