After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made by Ben Rhodes

After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made

by Ben Rhodes

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History & Foreign AffairsPolitics & Power

If you've ever wondered what American democracy looks like from outside, Rhodes looks for the answer in Orbán's Hungary, Putin's Russia, Hong Kong and Singapore. A former Obama White House aide, he meets officials and activists facing authoritarian movements like the ones at home, and his argument is that seeing where America went wrong tells you what's worth protecting.

Core ideas
  • Thirty years of erosion: Unchecked capitalism deepened global inequality and hurt working-class prosperity, and American exceptionalism has been declining for about three decades.
  • Room for rivals: That erosion let Xi's China and Putin's Russia gain ground while nationalist movements spread.
  • A shared playbook: Authoritarians use disinformation to destabilize democracies, and in Russia and Hong Kong the people who resisted were jailed, poisoned or crushed.
Published2021
Pages339
ISBN9781984856067
ReadDec 2025

Connected to 5 other books

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