A conscientious peeling away of the false democratic facade of contemporary authoritarianism.
A politically savvy exposé of the recent rise of “a global antidemocratic movement that claims to be acting in democracy’s defense.”
Beauchamp, a senior correspondent for Vox who focuses on right-wing populism, argues that the emergence of competitive authoritarianism, whose proponents hold (rigged) elections and undermine such democratic institutions as a free press and politically independent courts, is a consequence of a perceived need to defend social hierarchies from advances in social equality. This reactionary spirit pits democracy’s equal citizenship against a form of liberalism that embraces individual freedom and xenophobic nationalism. “Democracy, by its nature,” writes the author, “encourages the upending of social hierarchies,” and it’s “always possible for citizens to elect leaders whose policies would challenge the existing social order.” The rise of competitive authoritarianism was precipitated by postwar decolonization, the formation of welfare states, mass migration, and efforts to reduce discrimination against marginalized groups—e.g., Black citizens in the U.S. and the lower castes in India. Beauchamp uses four cases as illustration: the U.S., Hungary, Israel, and India, epitomized, respectively, by Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Narendra Modi. Although Beauchamp suggests American origins for competitive authoritarianism, his evidence is more congruent with it being a global phenomenon similar to the spread of democracy after World War II. As the author writes, it’s possible that “the consensus around the basic principles of liberal democracy in countries like the United States might not be nearly as widely shared” as many think. To counter the reactionary spirit, Beauchamp argues for democratic activism and evidence-based governance, and he thoughtfully presents the history of competitive authoritarianism and defines its major dimensions. As a broad assessment, the author’s approach is more than sufficient in detail and attentiveness to political theory and academic scholarship.
A conscientious peeling away of the false democratic facade of contemporary authoritarianism.Pub Date: July 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781541704411
Page Count: 272
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.
A New Jersey senator’s moral manifesto.
Booker situates his narrative in the wake of his 2025 record-breaking 25-hour stand on the Senate floor, an act of physical endurance and moral insistence that serves as its animating example. Though not framed as memoir, the episode implicitly positions Booker himself as a model of the virtues he argues are essential to democratic life. Organized around 10 qualities, including agency, vulnerability, truth, perseverance, and grace, the book advances a clear thesis. “In this book, I argue that many Americans who came before us, and many among us today, have consistently proven that virtues are practical: They expand our power, deepen our sense of belonging, and equip us to endure and ultimately prevail.” Booker illustrates this claim through figures such as the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, whose willingness to endure sacrifice for principle anchors the book’s moral lineage, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose composure under public scrutiny is presented as an example of dignity as civic strength. These portraits reinforce Booker’s belief that character, sustained over time, can shape public life, even when political outcomes remain uncertain or incomplete. He supplements these examples with personal stories drawn from family, faith, and community, delivered with emotional conviction and a tone that remains affirming and carefully calibrated. Much of the narrative reads like an expansive commencement address, earnest and reassuring, offering moral affirmation at moments when readers might reasonably expect sharper confrontation. That rhetorical choice ultimately defines the book’s limits. Booker acknowledges political conflict and compromise, but rarely examines them in depth, and while urging leaders to take moral risks, he avoids sustained reflection on how some of his own political decisions have tested the virtues he promotes. The result is a principled but self-conscious work that affirms shared values while offering little guidance for navigating power and accountability.
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781250436733
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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