The Reading Room

Living author

Timothy Snyder

1969-

A historian of Central and Eastern Europe and the twentieth century's catastrophes, whose short books on the present have reached an enormous readership. On Tyranny distills twenty lessons from the century's collapses into a pocket-sized civic handbook. On Freedom, written partly in wartime Ukraine, makes the affirmative case for what freedom is and what sustains it. He writes history as instruction for citizens who would rather not repeat it.

In the library

  • On Freedom

    The affirmative sequel to On Tyranny: not what to resist, but what to build. Snyder argues that freedom is not merely the absence of interference but...

  • On Tyranny

    Twenty lessons from the twentieth century, pocket-sized and urgent, the most-carried civic book of the era. Snyder distilled the hard-won knowledge of how free societies fall...