PositiveThe New York TimesRipley tells the harrowing tales of people who got drawn into fights that consume their lives and make them capable of committing terrible injustices, from a gang leader on the South Side of Chicago to a guerrilla fighter in the Colombian jungle ... Ripley also explains how it is possible for hardened combatants to leave behind the conflicts that once defined the core of their identity. But even conflicts that appear intractable, Ripley points out, often attenuate over time.Conflict, Ripley argues, can be productive ... Ripley’s book is not overtly political. Though she discusses the deep divisions now tearing apart the United States, her main motivation is to show that the dynamics pushing us into high conflict — as well as the techniques that can help to pull us out again — are universal. Whether she describes private clashes or political battles, the same themes emerge ... And if Ripley’s book is to be believed, other towns and families and countries can, too.
Eric A. Posner
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewA great virtue of Posner’s conceptual scheme is that it allows him to focus on those aspects of Trump’s presidency that are of lasting significance. Instead of condemning demagogues for any phrase or policy he happens to dislike, he zeros in on their dangerous habit of positing a conflict between the people and the very institutions that have historically enabled them to exert their power ... Still, a distinct drawback of the book is that it becomes a repetitive hunt for populists and demagogues. And while Posner’s sketches of major political figures from Thomas Jefferson to Franklin Roosevelt are often interesting, they do not add to the vast stock of knowledge we owe to their many biographers ... This could be more easily forgiven if Posner gave us a fresh perspective on our contemporary predicament. But when he finally reaches the present, his view of the Trump presidency turns out to be disappointingly conventional...It is difficult to argue with Posner’s conclusion. But it’s one that has long been shared by a vast swath of the American public.
Masha Gessen
MixedThe New York Times Book Review... a righteously furious account of the damage that Trump has inflicted on the country ... Surviving Autocracy rightly indicts Trump as an aspiring autocrat who has deeply weakened the institutions of the Republic. But the most valuable parts of the book consist of the crisp observations Gessen offers along the way ... Despite these important insights, the book suffers from a tendency to shoot in a very target-rich environment without bothering to take careful aim ... The same tendency to skew the narrative to fit a conclusion that would be wholly plausible without such misfires is also evident when Gessen turns toward more recent events ... At times, I found myself swayed by Gessen’s fear that everything is breaking his way, that even the things that appear to constrain his power—like his persistent incompetence—will somehow serve to deepen his hold on the American Republic and the American mind. But at other times, I felt a growing sense of hope that American voters could (as they so often have in the past) soon sour on the demagogue who once beguiled them.
Edward J. Watts
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewWatts, a professor of history at the University of California at San Diego, abandons a careful analysis of the larger trends for a blow-by-blow account of the many conflicts that divided the republic in the last century of its existence. At times, this endless onslaught of calamities—a new violation of some traditional norm, the latest commander to threaten an invasion of Rome, one more shift in the ever-fragile constellation of power—starts to numb the mind. But in another sense, the sheer repetitiveness of the calamities that befell Rome only serves to underline the book’s most urgent message. If we were to make explicit the implicit analogy that runs all the way through Mortal Republic, we would most likely cast Donald Trump as a farcical reincarnation of Tiberius Gracchus ... If the central analogy that animates Mortal Republic is correct, the current challenge to America’s political system is likely to persist long after its present occupant has left the White House.
