From America's leading scholar of democracy, the definitive exploration of today's dangerously rising wave of authoritarianism, from Asia to America—and a personal, passionate call to action that shows us how to restore U.S. democracy and global leadership.
Larry Diamond has made it his life's work both to study democracy and to advise dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. But when Donald Trump won the presidency by openly rejecting basic democratic norms, this lifelong scholar of democracy's struggles abroad felt a horrible sense of danger at home.
As Diamond has long chronicled, democracy expands and retreats in waves. From the 1970s into the 1990s, the “third wave” saw democracy spread through Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa and attempt to take root in the former Soviet empire. But since 2006, Diamond has tracked a global democratic recession. By 2016, illiberal rulers were eroding democracy in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the…
