In 1831, the then twenty-seven year old Alexis de Tocqueville, was sent with Gustave de Beaumont to America by the French Government to study and make a report on the American prison system. Over a period of nine months the two traveled all over America making notes not only on the prison systems but on all aspects of American society and government. From these notes, Tocqueville wrote "Democracy in America", an exhaustive analysis of the successes...

"This book has a miraculous quality.... As a memoir this is hard to put down; if you are seeking a better American future you should pick it up."—Timothy Snyder, New York Times best-selling author of On Tyranny

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | A celebrated foreign policy expert and key impeachment witness reveals how declining opportunity has set America on the grim path of modern Russia—and draws on

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"Of all the books on democracy in recent years one of the best is James Miller's Can Democracy Work? . . . Miller provides an intelligent journey through the turbulent past of this great human experiment in whether we can actually govern ourselves." -David Blight, The Guardian A new history of the world's most embattled idea Today, democracy is the world's only broadly accepted political system, and yet it has become synonymous with disappointment...

"From the Pulitzer-prize winning, New York Times bestselling author, an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organize to defeat them. We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: There is an all-powerful leader at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents. But in the 21st century,...

"Without drastic adjustment, this system cannot last much longer," writes Van Reybrouck. "If you look at the decline in voter turnout and party membership, and at the way politicians are held in contempt, if you look at how difficult it is to form governments, how little they can do and how harshly they are punished for it, if you look at how quickly populism, technocracy and anti-parliamentarianism are rising, if you look at how more and more citizens...

Erich Fromm's bestselling 1941 debut, about freedom and authoritarianism, is as relevant today as when it was first published The pursuit of freedom has indelibly marked Western culture since Renaissance humanism and Protestantism began the fight for individualism and self-determination. This freedom, however, can make people feel unmoored, and is often accompanied by feelings of isolation, fear, and the loss of self, all leading to a desire for authoritarianism,...

Here's something true for almost every American. The democracy you live in today is different, completely different, than the democracy born into. Since 1980, the number of Americans legally barred from voting has more than doubled. Since the 1990s, odds of living in a competitive Congressional district have fallen by more than half. In the twenty-first century alone, the amount of money spent on Washington lobbying has increased by more than 100...

"A call to reform our antiquated political institutions before it's too late-from the New York Times bestselling authors of How Democracies Die. America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and starts, toward a multiracial democracy, something few societies have ever done. But the prospect of change has sparked an authoritarian backlash that threatens the very foundations of our political system. Why is democracy under assault...

"Many similarities exist between the new movements against austerity that have emerged since 2011, ranging from Taksim Square in Turkey to the Chilean student protests, and from Greece to NYC. One of them is their return to the principles of direct democracy and their organization around popular assemblies. These ideas are hardly new - Murray Bookchin, who is one of the leading anarchist thinkers of the twentieth century, has been elaborating ideas...