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After the Fall: The Rise of Authoritarianism in the World We've Made
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Vital reading for Americans and people anywhere who seek to understand what is happening ‘after the fall’ of the global system created by the United States” ( New York Journal of Books ), from the former White House aide, close confidant to President Barack Obama, and author of The World as It Is
At a time when democracy in the United States is endangered as never before, Ben Rhodes spent years traveling the world to understand why. He visited dozens of countries, meeting with politicians and activists confronting the same nationalism and authoritarianism that are tearing America apart. Along the way, he discusses the growing authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin, and his aggression towards Ukraine, with the foremost opposition leader in Russia, who was subsequently poisoned and imprisoned; he profiled Hong Kong protesters who saw their movement snuffed out by China under Xi Jinping; and America itself reached the precipice of losing democracy before giving itself a fragile second chance.
The characters and issues that Rhodes illuminates paint a picture that shows us where we are today—from Barack Obama to a rising generation of international leaders; from the authoritarian playbook endangering democracy to the flood of disinformation enabling authoritarianism. Ultimately, Rhodes writes personally and powerfully about finding hope in the belief that looking squarely at where America has gone wrong can make clear how essential it is to fight for what America is supposed to be, for our own country and the entire world.
At a time when democracy in the United States is endangered as never before, Ben Rhodes spent years traveling the world to understand why. He visited dozens of countries, meeting with politicians and activists confronting the same nationalism and authoritarianism that are tearing America apart. Along the way, he discusses the growing authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin, and his aggression towards Ukraine, with the foremost opposition leader in Russia, who was subsequently poisoned and imprisoned; he profiled Hong Kong protesters who saw their movement snuffed out by China under Xi Jinping; and America itself reached the precipice of losing democracy before giving itself a fragile second chance.
The characters and issues that Rhodes illuminates paint a picture that shows us where we are today—from Barack Obama to a rising generation of international leaders; from the authoritarian playbook endangering democracy to the flood of disinformation enabling authoritarianism. Ultimately, Rhodes writes personally and powerfully about finding hope in the belief that looking squarely at where America has gone wrong can make clear how essential it is to fight for what America is supposed to be, for our own country and the entire world.
384 pages, Paperback
Published May 24, 2022
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About the author
Ben Rhodes
4 books467 followersFrom 2009 to 2017, Ben Rhodes served as deputy national security advisor to President Barack Obama, overseeing the administration’s national security communications, speechwriting, public diplomacy, and global engagement programming. Prior to joining the Obama administration, from 2007 to 2008 Rhodes was a senior speechwriter and foreign policy advisor to the Obama campaign. Before joining then–Senator Obama’s campaign, he worked for former congressman Lee Hamilton from 2002 to 2007. He was the co-author, with Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, of Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission. A native New Yorker, Rhodes has a BA from Rice University and an MFA from New York University.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 6, 2024
Some fascinating insight, but I feel this writer suffers from the very common malady of having no grasp on why we have arrived in such an insane world. The tearing effect of modern political discourse has become so bad that anyone standing on either side of the line sounds like a schizophrenic maniac after speaking with them for only a few minutes. Turning politics into 'sports teams' has made each side become more and more extreme in their foundational beliefs simply to spite the other side.
This book, very predictably, says little else but "Look how evil the Right is. Truly sad". And that's it. That is the depth of the analysis. Now, don't get me wrong: the Right is psychotic. They always have been. The racism, the hatred of queer people, the denial of reality at essentially every turn, but the real world is more complicated than assuming you are doing every single thing right and those who disagree are doing every single thing wrong. There are many conservatives who are not, in fact, psychotic. And there are many leftists today who ARE, in fact, psychotic.
There is no hint whatsoever in this book of the Right becoming more crazy because they have to match the Left, which is also becoming more insane by the year. There is very little critical analysis on the ways the Left has been going wrong over the last decade. But no one ever learns from history. They just do the same damn thing over and over. I've checked out, personally. Go ahead and tear each other to shreds. You're both too stupid to understand what is happening, let alone why it is happening. When stupidity and base tribalism vastly outnumber reason and objectivity, what is one to do but just watch LOTR and eat chicken nuggets. As Captain Sparrow would say, I wash my hands of this weirdness. (I'll still vote, of course. But I am no longer in the arena. It's just corrosive. I will show up to the polls when the time comes, then I will return to my life.)
This book, very predictably, says little else but "Look how evil the Right is. Truly sad". And that's it. That is the depth of the analysis. Now, don't get me wrong: the Right is psychotic. They always have been. The racism, the hatred of queer people, the denial of reality at essentially every turn, but the real world is more complicated than assuming you are doing every single thing right and those who disagree are doing every single thing wrong. There are many conservatives who are not, in fact, psychotic. And there are many leftists today who ARE, in fact, psychotic.
There is no hint whatsoever in this book of the Right becoming more crazy because they have to match the Left, which is also becoming more insane by the year. There is very little critical analysis on the ways the Left has been going wrong over the last decade. But no one ever learns from history. They just do the same damn thing over and over. I've checked out, personally. Go ahead and tear each other to shreds. You're both too stupid to understand what is happening, let alone why it is happening. When stupidity and base tribalism vastly outnumber reason and objectivity, what is one to do but just watch LOTR and eat chicken nuggets. As Captain Sparrow would say, I wash my hands of this weirdness. (I'll still vote, of course. But I am no longer in the arena. It's just corrosive. I will show up to the polls when the time comes, then I will return to my life.)
July 18, 2022
Unfortunately the subtitle “The Rise of Authoritarianism in the World We’ve Made” is misleading. I was hoping for a more in-depth analysis of what causes Autocracies to grow out of otherwise free societies, including the social/psychological/economic factors that have provided opportunities for an entire American political party to abandon democracy and support authoritarianism as their platform. This is more of a memoir that 1) loosely collects stories of Rhodes’ interactions with various figures living within authoritarian systems and 2) provides anecdotes about his years working with Obama and what he learned from those interactions.
March 30, 2025
In this book, Ben Rhodes - former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting under President Obama (2009-2017) - presents a really enjoyable and interesting portrait of the political developments that have occurred throughout the past few decades. Of course, this book is quite US-centric, but in a way that reflects quite subtly about the ways in which the US is implicated in the rise of Authoritarianism worldwide.
In Part 1, "The Authoritarian Playbook", Rhodes takes us to Orban's Hungary, inviting us to reflect on how politics have evolved there since the end of the Cold War. Orban's nationalism, we learn, is based upon resentment of two pillars of the post-Cold War US order: "unequal wealth creation of open markets, and the unchecked excesses of American military power" (p. 15). Where Bush marshalled national fervor about terrorism in the early 2000s, Orban created national fervour by poining to the enemies of globalization and his political opponents at home (p. 19). "In America, as in Hungary, the right wing has embraced a nationalism characterized by Christian identity, national sovereignty, distrust of democratic institutions, opposition to immigration, and contempt for politically correct elites." (p. 35). Orban, just like the Republicans in the US, stylize themselves as arbiters of who is, respectively, a "true" American/Hungarian. What unites Orban, Trump, and Putin? "Christianity, hostility to Muslisms, subversion of the international order, the longing for an idealized past" (p. 64). Orban, however, took many of his tactics from Putin.
Part 2, "The Counterrevolution", hence, turns to Putin's Russia. Rhodes reminds us of the transformative 1990s, when capitalism took a hold in Russia, bringing massive change to the country. The Oligarchy was beginning to form (p. 84). Furthermore, the author explains how the gruesome images arising from the War on Terror (Abu Ghraib; Guantanamo) confirmed Putin's most cynical views of the US (p. 88). Russia, as we know, also stopped obeying rules (2008: Georgia; 2014: Ukraine). Reading about Navalny, with the benefit of hindsight, makes chapter 10 quite haunting. Putin pointed to overreaches perpetrated by the US when justifying Russia's wars (p. 113). Intersection between US and Russia: "After the Cold War, Russia (partly by American design) became more like America as it opened things up. But then, over the last decade, America (partly by Russian design) became more like Russia, as nationalism and conspiracy theorizing shaped our politics. Ironically, this Russian effort was made much easier by American-made social media and online culture." (p. 134). To Putin, the collapse of the Soviet Union and globalization represented an assault on Moscoe (p. 138). Rhodes, very self-critically, reflects on how American choices without consultation of Russians contributed to the issues in our relationship with Russia: a. America's expansion of markets; b. embrace of the global war on terror (p. 144).
PART 3 - "The Chinese Dream". China differs from Hungary and Russia, obviously, in the way in which it never claimed to embrace liberalism (p. 156). [This is only partly true if we look at how China today talks about free markets]. Xi's China, much rather, blends a state-led capitalism with elemenets of "techno-totalitarianism" (p. 156). Again, while China started becoming more "American" in the sense of capitalistic structural changes towards the end of the 20th century, it is now that "America is becoming more like China - a place of growing economic inequality, grievance-based nationalism, vast data collection, and creeping authoritarianism" (p. 158). Rhodes recounts China's terrible experiences of the 20th century (Great Leap Forward; "Cultural Revolution") which were then followed by the plugging into the grid of globalized capitalism as initated by Deng Xiaoping (p. 160). A crucial factor in China's rise has been its construction of a particular Chinese identity (p. 164). Centrally, the Chinese Communist Party has become the arbiter of Chinese identity (p. 166). Then, Rhodes takes us through the financial collapse of 2007-2009. The "Chinese Dream" emerges: "Mao was stand up. Then Deng was Get rich. And now Xi is Become strong." (p. 177). Of course, we also learn about the war on the Uyghurs in Xinjiang (p. 179). We also get introduced to the difficult situation with Hong Kong (p. 195), where the security laws significantly curb the rights of Hong Kongers to protest, etc. Towards the end of section 3, we find a nice sentence that encapsulates the book's core message "How over the last thirty years, American-led globalization, our post-9/11 fixation on national security, and our scaling up of technologies that we didn't fully understand had dhelped create the authoritarian dynamics that I'd just described." (p. 234). Here, Rhodes is at his most beautiful, describing all the contradictions and multiplicities that define "America": "America matters because our identity is inherently contested. We, more than any other nation, contain multitudes, made up of every strand of humanity, encompassing all of the contradictions, hypocrises, comptetitions, fears, and hopes in the stories that people tell themselves about who they are." (p. 236). He suggests that "More fundamentally, we need to figure out who we are - what it means to be American." (p. 236).
This, then, leads to the book's final part, "Who We are: Being American" . This part takes us through some core parts of American self-understanding, including the ability "to do big things" (p. 252), the U.S. government being an "ocean-liner" that is hard to turn around (p. 286). Rhodes closes the book very nicely, I will quote in full: "Yet power corrupts, and when America reached its post-Cold War heights, we were unmoored from our innate resistance to unchecked power. It was too easy to acquire as much wealth as possible, concentrated in the hands of a few winners, without regard to the anger that that could engender - from Russians watching their dignity debased by the ascent of a class of 1990s oligarchs to Hungarians and Americans who concluded that the entire system was rigged. It was too easy to launch invasions of other countries and stir up nationalist sentiment through a war that seemed to offer a clear enemy, the Other of Islamists, without anticipating how that could normalize a hypersecuritized politics of Us versus Them - the Uighurs in concentration camps, or the refugees subjected to inhumane treatment on Hungary's borders, or the ban on travel to the United States from majority Muslim countries. It was too easy to image that our technological innovations were ushering us into a utopian age of connectivity without anticipating what else those technologies could do - the flood of Russian disinformation on American social media, the totalitarianism of China's social credit system, or the conspiracy theories that could make masses of Americans believe just about anything, no matter how irrational or dangerous." (p. 335). Here we are.
In sum, this was an interesting recap of some of the last decades of US politics, from an astute writer. I found the most valuable insight to be how the US is entangled with the rise of authoritarian power worldwide, including Hungary, Russia, and China. We might extend this analysis, obviously, to countries like India and Israel. However, some downsides of the book include: to what extent is his suggestion to ask the question of American identity, to figure out "what America is supposed to be" (p. 324) productive of a desirable political course for the US? I am a little skeptical here; the same question could be posed by reactionaries; in fact, why do we need to ask this question in the first place, what is it that makes this question of identity so crucial? I am afraid that we are copying right-wing talking points here. There are questions that are more important than questions around identity; for example, questions around affinity (thinking with Haraway here). What connects us in spite of differences? Can we affirm differences rather than strive for fixed identites (which don't exist in the first place)?
QUESTIONS:
- What to think about his suggestions at page 236-237?
- What is missing from his analysis?
- What about the Ocean Liner argument in light of current events (e.g., DOGE)? (p. 286)
- Is this book sufficiently critical of Obama's politics?
In Part 1, "The Authoritarian Playbook", Rhodes takes us to Orban's Hungary, inviting us to reflect on how politics have evolved there since the end of the Cold War. Orban's nationalism, we learn, is based upon resentment of two pillars of the post-Cold War US order: "unequal wealth creation of open markets, and the unchecked excesses of American military power" (p. 15). Where Bush marshalled national fervor about terrorism in the early 2000s, Orban created national fervour by poining to the enemies of globalization and his political opponents at home (p. 19). "In America, as in Hungary, the right wing has embraced a nationalism characterized by Christian identity, national sovereignty, distrust of democratic institutions, opposition to immigration, and contempt for politically correct elites." (p. 35). Orban, just like the Republicans in the US, stylize themselves as arbiters of who is, respectively, a "true" American/Hungarian. What unites Orban, Trump, and Putin? "Christianity, hostility to Muslisms, subversion of the international order, the longing for an idealized past" (p. 64). Orban, however, took many of his tactics from Putin.
Part 2, "The Counterrevolution", hence, turns to Putin's Russia. Rhodes reminds us of the transformative 1990s, when capitalism took a hold in Russia, bringing massive change to the country. The Oligarchy was beginning to form (p. 84). Furthermore, the author explains how the gruesome images arising from the War on Terror (Abu Ghraib; Guantanamo) confirmed Putin's most cynical views of the US (p. 88). Russia, as we know, also stopped obeying rules (2008: Georgia; 2014: Ukraine). Reading about Navalny, with the benefit of hindsight, makes chapter 10 quite haunting. Putin pointed to overreaches perpetrated by the US when justifying Russia's wars (p. 113). Intersection between US and Russia: "After the Cold War, Russia (partly by American design) became more like America as it opened things up. But then, over the last decade, America (partly by Russian design) became more like Russia, as nationalism and conspiracy theorizing shaped our politics. Ironically, this Russian effort was made much easier by American-made social media and online culture." (p. 134). To Putin, the collapse of the Soviet Union and globalization represented an assault on Moscoe (p. 138). Rhodes, very self-critically, reflects on how American choices without consultation of Russians contributed to the issues in our relationship with Russia: a. America's expansion of markets; b. embrace of the global war on terror (p. 144).
PART 3 - "The Chinese Dream". China differs from Hungary and Russia, obviously, in the way in which it never claimed to embrace liberalism (p. 156). [This is only partly true if we look at how China today talks about free markets]. Xi's China, much rather, blends a state-led capitalism with elemenets of "techno-totalitarianism" (p. 156). Again, while China started becoming more "American" in the sense of capitalistic structural changes towards the end of the 20th century, it is now that "America is becoming more like China - a place of growing economic inequality, grievance-based nationalism, vast data collection, and creeping authoritarianism" (p. 158). Rhodes recounts China's terrible experiences of the 20th century (Great Leap Forward; "Cultural Revolution") which were then followed by the plugging into the grid of globalized capitalism as initated by Deng Xiaoping (p. 160). A crucial factor in China's rise has been its construction of a particular Chinese identity (p. 164). Centrally, the Chinese Communist Party has become the arbiter of Chinese identity (p. 166). Then, Rhodes takes us through the financial collapse of 2007-2009. The "Chinese Dream" emerges: "Mao was stand up. Then Deng was Get rich. And now Xi is Become strong." (p. 177). Of course, we also learn about the war on the Uyghurs in Xinjiang (p. 179). We also get introduced to the difficult situation with Hong Kong (p. 195), where the security laws significantly curb the rights of Hong Kongers to protest, etc. Towards the end of section 3, we find a nice sentence that encapsulates the book's core message "How over the last thirty years, American-led globalization, our post-9/11 fixation on national security, and our scaling up of technologies that we didn't fully understand had dhelped create the authoritarian dynamics that I'd just described." (p. 234). Here, Rhodes is at his most beautiful, describing all the contradictions and multiplicities that define "America": "America matters because our identity is inherently contested. We, more than any other nation, contain multitudes, made up of every strand of humanity, encompassing all of the contradictions, hypocrises, comptetitions, fears, and hopes in the stories that people tell themselves about who they are." (p. 236). He suggests that "More fundamentally, we need to figure out who we are - what it means to be American." (p. 236).
This, then, leads to the book's final part, "Who We are: Being American" . This part takes us through some core parts of American self-understanding, including the ability "to do big things" (p. 252), the U.S. government being an "ocean-liner" that is hard to turn around (p. 286). Rhodes closes the book very nicely, I will quote in full: "Yet power corrupts, and when America reached its post-Cold War heights, we were unmoored from our innate resistance to unchecked power. It was too easy to acquire as much wealth as possible, concentrated in the hands of a few winners, without regard to the anger that that could engender - from Russians watching their dignity debased by the ascent of a class of 1990s oligarchs to Hungarians and Americans who concluded that the entire system was rigged. It was too easy to launch invasions of other countries and stir up nationalist sentiment through a war that seemed to offer a clear enemy, the Other of Islamists, without anticipating how that could normalize a hypersecuritized politics of Us versus Them - the Uighurs in concentration camps, or the refugees subjected to inhumane treatment on Hungary's borders, or the ban on travel to the United States from majority Muslim countries. It was too easy to image that our technological innovations were ushering us into a utopian age of connectivity without anticipating what else those technologies could do - the flood of Russian disinformation on American social media, the totalitarianism of China's social credit system, or the conspiracy theories that could make masses of Americans believe just about anything, no matter how irrational or dangerous." (p. 335). Here we are.
In sum, this was an interesting recap of some of the last decades of US politics, from an astute writer. I found the most valuable insight to be how the US is entangled with the rise of authoritarian power worldwide, including Hungary, Russia, and China. We might extend this analysis, obviously, to countries like India and Israel. However, some downsides of the book include: to what extent is his suggestion to ask the question of American identity, to figure out "what America is supposed to be" (p. 324) productive of a desirable political course for the US? I am a little skeptical here; the same question could be posed by reactionaries; in fact, why do we need to ask this question in the first place, what is it that makes this question of identity so crucial? I am afraid that we are copying right-wing talking points here. There are questions that are more important than questions around identity; for example, questions around affinity (thinking with Haraway here). What connects us in spite of differences? Can we affirm differences rather than strive for fixed identites (which don't exist in the first place)?
QUESTIONS:
- What to think about his suggestions at page 236-237?
- What is missing from his analysis?
- What about the Ocean Liner argument in light of current events (e.g., DOGE)? (p. 286)
- Is this book sufficiently critical of Obama's politics?
January 27, 2024
It's very hard to classify this book. It's not in-depth enough to be a history (almost no historical research went into the writing), it's not political because it in unnecessarily very partisan without justification (though I probably agree with most of the author's politics), and it has far too many personal stories, but not a memoir (which I despise). It's mostly a collection of stories of the author interacting with like-minded individuals and self-serving stories that add very little value. The premise is fantastic and I would love to read a history book on the topic, but the execution of this book is terrible. Maybe George Will will write a book on the topic! I love the author's writing style and organization, but the topic was not presented well. Not recommended unless you are a total fan of the author (who I was unaware of before reading the book), and even then, probably not.
December 31, 2023
Here's (by-THEN former) President Obama, according to his former-advisor and still-OCCASIONAL companion to overseas-trips Ben RHODES, on the Trump phenomenon[*]: "Obama's frustration was more likely to cone out in dark humor. Trump is for a lot of people what O.J.'s aquittal was to a lot of Black folks—you know it's wrong, but it feels good.
As opposed to Putin's Russia, where the guy goes to every great length to insure it's proven (provable ... ?? 🤔 #HMM ) to others that The U.S. is as bad as us, they're equally CORRUPT — which is a curious pitch to strike and makes a LOT of sense and one that I, for ONE, did not know about until I read this book ...
(Thanks to whoever put this in the Portland "free box" for me — I know there are PLENTY around town, but I really do appreciate it ... !!!)
😀 👍👍👍 #YEAH
It's a good book. I do heartily RECOMMEND it — four stars.
So.
------------------------------------
[*] Which of course is laughable ... LAUGHABLE!!! I can't remember if it was in the Michael MOORE movie or what, but, people are like "Gosh, President Trump, I'm ashamed to admit ... I've never voted my WHOLE LIFE, up 'til now!!!" (emph. ADDED 🙄 😡 🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕 #fuckYOUidiots #fuckYOUUUUU ) You can't even believe these people. They actually get out of bed. It's a line in Slacker , about how nobody votes and someday these non-voting majorities will rise up (this guy in a group house says ... to his roommates, who aren't really listening, including the guy he's playing a "comb game" with, whereupon if you flinch or miss paying attention YOU LOSE, who takes advantage of his opponent's specifying and concomitant DISTRACTION to ... WIN!!! 😉 👍👍👍 #YEAH ) and that Bush and Reagan and all them say they have a mandate from the Public when they hardly won like 44% or something, that's not a mandate, "Hitler and the Nazis had more of a mandate" ... blah-blah-blah. Which sounds like a good point, but it's not, as Ben Rhodes points out in this book: voter apathy means, a lot of times, the system is healthy, because people don't feel the need to get involved, that they can rely on it. As some guy said, on Twitter once, I keep remembering, " ... as opposed to checking Twitter twice a day about your President to see how he was doing and worrying terribly, rather than every two weeks and vaguely at that and the newspaper while checking other things ... ??" Something like that (is that 280 characters ... ?? 🤔 #HMM ). I keep changing it and adding to it every time I RECALL it — So. 😉 👍👍👍 #YEAH - ed.
As opposed to Putin's Russia, where the guy goes to every great length to insure it's proven (provable ... ?? 🤔 #HMM ) to others that The U.S. is as bad as us, they're equally CORRUPT — which is a curious pitch to strike and makes a LOT of sense and one that I, for ONE, did not know about until I read this book ...
(Thanks to whoever put this in the Portland "free box" for me — I know there are PLENTY around town, but I really do appreciate it ... !!!)
😀 👍👍👍 #YEAH
It's a good book. I do heartily RECOMMEND it — four stars.
So.
------------------------------------
[*] Which of course is laughable ... LAUGHABLE!!! I can't remember if it was in the Michael MOORE movie or what, but, people are like "Gosh, President Trump, I'm ashamed to admit ... I've never voted my WHOLE LIFE, up 'til now!!!" (emph. ADDED 🙄 😡 🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕 #fuckYOUidiots #fuckYOUUUUU ) You can't even believe these people. They actually get out of bed. It's a line in Slacker , about how nobody votes and someday these non-voting majorities will rise up (this guy in a group house says ... to his roommates, who aren't really listening, including the guy he's playing a "comb game" with, whereupon if you flinch or miss paying attention YOU LOSE, who takes advantage of his opponent's specifying and concomitant DISTRACTION to ... WIN!!! 😉 👍👍👍 #YEAH ) and that Bush and Reagan and all them say they have a mandate from the Public when they hardly won like 44% or something, that's not a mandate, "Hitler and the Nazis had more of a mandate" ... blah-blah-blah. Which sounds like a good point, but it's not, as Ben Rhodes points out in this book: voter apathy means, a lot of times, the system is healthy, because people don't feel the need to get involved, that they can rely on it. As some guy said, on Twitter once, I keep remembering, " ... as opposed to checking Twitter twice a day about your President to see how he was doing and worrying terribly, rather than every two weeks and vaguely at that and the newspaper while checking other things ... ??" Something like that (is that 280 characters ... ?? 🤔 #HMM ). I keep changing it and adding to it every time I RECALL it — So. 😉 👍👍👍 #YEAH - ed.
August 27, 2024
An eloquent lament on the state of democracy in America. As an Australian, I found it extraordinarily interesting to gain deeper insight into the U.S. political system and economy, particularly from the perspective of a former Obama White House staffer. Most concerning were the strong parallels drawn between America, often hailed as the 'land of the free,' and the more traditional authoritarian regimes such as Russia and China. The book underscores how close modern democracies are to authoritarianism and serves as a cautionary tale about how any modern democracy could potentially fall into an authoritarian trap if the climate is right much like America did upon electing Trump as president.
October 13, 2024
Listened to this as an audiobook but I think I would’ve like it more as a regular book as I found myself getting lost a few times. This wasn’t quite the book I expected. While there was some history of authoritarianism from around the world, it didn’t quite explain the US role in our current situation as detailed as I expected. There were a lot of personal stories, which I don’t mind, but they didn’t seem to add much and it started to feel like two different books. I like the premise, but the book ultimately felt a bit self-indulgent. It would be a pass for me.
October 10, 2023
Ben Rhodes reflection on America based on his past experiences under Obama and post-Obama. A very good read essentially summarising all that is bad in the US giving rise to unchecked and unhinged politicians around the world including the US.
February 19, 2025
A magnificent must read for anyone looking to understand our current international political realities. It’s a brutally honest analysis of the imperfections of the United States, but it constantly returns to a position of hopefulness about the future.
August 9, 2024
After the Fall teaches us not just about authoritarianism, but also about the people impacted by it. Rhodes uses is experience in international affairs to show the human cost of these regimes, and does so in a compelling way that few books in this genre achieve.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews