โWhen Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen.โย โThe New York Times
โAย reckoning with what has been lost in the past few years and a map forward with our beliefs intact.โย โInterview
As seen on MSNBCโsย Morning Joe and heard on NPRโs All Things Considered: the bestselling, National Book Awardโwinning journalist offers anย essential guide to understanding, resisting, and recovering from the ravages of our tumultuous times.
This incisive book providesย an essential guide to understanding and recovering from the calamitous corrosion of American democracy over the past few years. Thanks to the special perspective that is the legacy of a Soviet childhood and two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia, Masha Gessen has a sixth sense for the manifestations of autocracyโand the unique cross-cultural fluency to delineate their emergence to Americans. Gessen not only anatomizes the corrosion of the institutions and cultural norms we hoped would save us but also tells us the story of how a short few years changed us from a people who saw ourselves as a nation of immigrants to a populace haggling over a border wall, heirs to a degraded sense of truth, meaning, and possibility.ย Surviving Autocracyย is an inventory of ravages and a call to account but also a beacon to recoveryโand to the hope of what comes next.