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Title details for Empire of Democracy by Simon Reid-Henry - Available

Empire of Democracy

The Remaking of the West Since the Cold War, 1971–2017

by Simon Reid-Henry
Elliot Fitzpatrick
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
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2 of 2 copies available
The first panoramic history of the Western world from the 1970s to the present day—from the Cold War to the 2008 financial crisis and wars in the Middle East—Empire of Democracy is "a superbly informed and riveting historical analysis of our contemporary era" (Charles S. Maier, Harvard University).
Half a century ago, at the height of the Cold War and amidst a world economic crisis, the Western democracies were forced to undergo a profound transformation. Against what some saw as a full-scale "crisis of democracy"—with race riots, anti-Vietnam marches and a wave of worker discontent sowing crisis from one nation to the next—a new political-economic order was devised and the postwar social contract was torn up and written anew.

In this epic narrative of the events that have shaped our own times, Simon Reid-Henry shows how liberal democracy, and western history with it, was profoundly reimagined when the postwar Golden Age ended. As the institutions of liberal rule were reinvented, a new generation of politicians emerged: Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterrand, Kohl. The late twentieth century heyday they oversaw carried the Western democracies triumphantly to victory in the Cold War and into the economic boom of the 1990s. But equally it led them into the fiasco of Iraq, to the high drama of the financial crisis in 2007/8, and ultimately to the anti-liberal surge of our own times.

The present crisis of liberalism is leading us toward as yet unscripted decades. The era we have all been living through is closing out, and democracy is turning on its axis once again. "Brilliantly, Reid-Henry calls for the salvation of democracy from the choices of its own leaders if it is to survive" (Samuel Moyn, Yale University).

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 25, 2019

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781508296409
      • File size: 995567 KB
      • Duration: 34:34:05

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 10, 2019
      Historian Reid-Henry (The Cuban Cure) attempts, with mixed success, to corral and synthesize the last half-century of Western democratic states in this sprawling history, which begins with the Paris protests in the summer of 1968 and stretches to the 2016 votes triggering the U.K.’s withdrawal from the European Union and electing Donald Trump as U.S. president. Reid-Henry’s scholarship is impressive, gathering a wide range of historical anecdotes and referencing a diverse set of thinkers (citing Betty Friedan, Daniel Boorstin, and John Kenneth Galbraith on a single page), but this erudite and formidable project ultimately falters under the immense weight of its massive ambitions. The overwhelming volume of varied historical and cultural events—ranging from the emergence of the gay rights movement, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the freeing of Nelson Mandela, and the Clinton impeachment to the release of the movie The Blair Witch Project—require jumping from event to event with dizzying speed. Moments of succinct, elegant analysis, such as his insightful summation of the 1980s conservative movements (“the Thatcher-Reagan brand of neoliberalism actively required the state and its levers of control. Its task was not to reduce state power but to transform it.”) can be lost among verbose passages. The immense scope and intermittently dense prose make this a daunting task for all but the most committed of readers.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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