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    Masha Gessen’s Guide to Understanding Tyranny

    Top Ten Books

    If you needed any further proof that we live in dark times, look not further than the death/murder of Alexei Navalny in his remote Arctic prison. Meanwhile, half then world's population will be going to the polls in 2024, and based on results to date in Indonesia and El Salvador, which both gave sizable mandates to strong men, the outlook is bleak. While the results in Russia are a foregone conclusion, other countries appear to be on the cliff edge of a populist abyss, the United States among them. There are multiple reasons for the crisis facing western democracy, but not least among them is our troubling failure to learn from history. We may live in the information age, but people spend less time reading books than they do absorbed in social media where facts are disposable, and truth can be anything you want it to be. Books are our greatest defense against ignorance. To quote the great Fran Lebowitz: “Think before you speak. Read before you think.” To get you started we invited the journalist and LGBT activist, Masha Gessen, author of The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, among many other gooks, to put together a list of ten tomes that explore what it means to live in an authoritarian world. 

    Below are Masha Gessen's favorite books on the ills of authoritarianism, available to purchase individually or as a set. See the full list...

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    Matthew Modine

    $182.93

    The Cousteau Almanac of the Environment: An Inventory of Life on a Water Planet (Vintage Edition)

    Jacques-Yves Cousteau

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    Meg Wolitzer

    $146.91

    To The Lighthouse

    Virginia Woolf

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    Meghan Udell

    $204.68

    The Moving Finger

    Agatha Christie

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    Michael C. Hall

    $163.84

    Fun Home

    Alison Bechdel

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    Michael Cunningham

    $163.87

    To The Lighthouse

    Virginia Woolf

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    Michael Ian Black

    $122.91

    From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

    E.L. Konigsburg

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    Michael Pollan

    $174.80

    The Odyssey

    Homer

  • Full List Michael Shannon

    Michael Shannon

    $156.93

    Notes and Counter Notes

    Eugene Ionesco

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    Michael Stipe

    From: $146.98

    Just Kids

    Patti Smith

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