Over tirannie: Twintig lessen uit de twintigste eeuw

by Timothy Snyder, Inge Pieters (Translator)

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics

92 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 16, 2026

About the author

Timothy Snyder is Housum Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1997, where he was a British Marshall Scholar. He has held fellowships in Paris, Vienna, and Warsaw, and an Academy Scholarship at Harvard.

His most recent book is Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, published in September 2015 by Crown Books. He is author also of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010), a history of Nazi and Soviet mass killing on the lands between Berlin and Moscow. A New York Times bestseller and a book of the year according to The Atlantic, The Independent, The Financial Times, the Telegraph, and the New Statesman, it has won twelve awards including the Emerson Prize in the Humanities, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Leipzig Award for European Understanding, and the Hannah Arendt Prize in Political Thought.

His other award-winning publications include Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (1998); The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (2003); Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (2005); The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke (2008), and Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010).

Snyder helped Tony Judt to compose a thematic history of political ideas and intellectuals in politics, Thinking the Twentieth Century (2012). He is also the co-editor of Stalin and Europe: Terror, War, Domination and Wall Around the West: State Power and Immigration Controls in Europe and North America (2001).

Snyder was the recipient of an inaugural Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2015. He is a member of the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and sits on the advisory council of the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research Research.

He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in modern East European political history.

Reviews

[Irene Jurna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gelegenheidsboek voor 4 mei. Vrijheid is niet vanzelfsprekend - ook al kan dat in het leven van dag tot dag wel zo voelen. Timothy Snyder geeft in dit boekje praktische handvaten om als individu een bijdrage te leveren.

Hij doet dat aan de hand van geschiedenislessen uit de 20e eeuw/ Snyder zoomt in op de rol van burgers bij het ontstaan van fascistische en communistische grootmachten. Nu de democratie in steeds meer landen onder druk staat, kunnen we hier vandaag de dag van leren.

“Leven is politiek, omdat de wereld reageert op wat jij doet. De symbolen van nu, maken de realiteit van morgen mogelijk.” Laaghangend fruit dat ik vandaag meteen kan doen: onderzoeksjournalistiek steunen, zodat de waarheid haar stem behoudt.

[Karel · Rating 4 out of 5]

two lessons: read more, and don't expect institutions to work for you when the crisis hits when you don't invest in itself.
got some nice insights by reading this book. yes I think we took freedom too much for granted in the west. history warns us. it's not for granted.
this book has clear reasoning and examples, and practical.

[Rinie Altena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gewoon leuk om te lezen. Maar wel heel inzichtelijk.

[Corine Hamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dit boekje zou iedereen moeten lezen!