Reviews

The Double Meaning of Prey

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One of more popular twentieth century novels of manners, love and heartbreak, Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love has been in print since it was first published in 1945. Re-crafted into movies and a television series, the story has struck a nerve over the decades, connecting with different generations. Roman a clef? The book most definitely was closely drawn from Mitford’s own experiences and that of her family and friends. More than a biography, from stories to observations, it cannot be read solely as a veiled family history. Though one may be tempted to do some investigative googling . . . .

Mitford was a brilliant novelist, a member of a family with a peerage (her father was a Baron), and a highly networked celebrity. Her friends and family had money, wealth, power and status. She authored eight novels, four biographies, edited numerous works and numerous articles and essays. Several biographies have taken aim at her and her family, explaining the who, what and when behind this book.

The Pursuit of Love opens with a scattered family history from the voice of a first person narrator, Fanny. While not a member of the Radlett family, Fanny was intimately connected with them from childhood. All the eccentricities of English country wealth are gently satirized as the story steadily moves to focus on one of the Radlett sisters, Linda. By the second half, the novel takes the shape of a more traditional account of a woman’s loves, hopes and dream. Fanny’s closest friend, Linda, is a memorable character. She is larger than life and in surprising ways, smaller than one might expect. Linda moves through marriages, relationships, war and family with a remarkable ability to disengage and engage without consistency. As such, Linda is both of the world and strangely apart from it. Love, as the title indicates, is central to Linda’s life. She searches for love, in particular forms, and love, in other forms, finds her. She both preys on some of those around her and is preyed upon by others.

The story is romantic and tragic. It delivers in style.

And yet . . . . for this reader, I found it a little thin. Great characters and gentle satire can only take a work so far. Missing from the story are issues of growth, realization, and deeper meaning. Like its heroine and me, the novel is searching for something a bit more substantial. It is one of the reasons I have enjoyed discussing the book with those who have read it. The question always comes down to a little less interest in the story and great curiosity in the why. In Pursuit is a well worth your time, but for me, more appetizer than a full meal. Unless, of course, we’re talking about it. If so, we’ll linger for all of dinner.

David Potash

The Double Meaning of Prey

Jewish Eden in the Borscht Belt

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A Summer World: The Attempt to Build a Jewish Eden in the Catskills from the Days of the Ghetto to the Rise and Decline of the Borscht Belt is an expansive cultural history from Stefan Kanfer. Published in 1989, when the memories of the Catskills Jewish resorts was still fresh, the book is long on anecdotes, personal stories and jokes – lots and lots of jokes. While the Catskills have changed since it was written, the book’s relevance remains. A Summer World has value and an immediacy that shines through its pages.

The heart of the book is Grossinger’s Catskills Resort Hotel, a famous facility whose cultural impact extended well beyond New York City’s Jewish population, and its long-stranding owner, Jennie Grossinger. It was founded by Jewish immigrants from Poland, like many other hotels and bungalow colonies in the region. Grossinger’s grew, changed, and changed again over the years, growing more sophisticated as it catered to a more sophisticated audience. So many famous entertainers cut their teeth at Grossingers and other Jewish resorts. Kanfer, an enthusiastic fan, relishes telling tales.

A Summer World is neither scholarly nor tightly argued. The prose is nostalgic and warm. It is an easy read, perhaps best suited to those that already have a sense of the region and its history. Or for those who miss Borscht Belt humor.

David Potash

Jewish Eden in the Borscht Belt

Reconstruction Culture In The Crescent City

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Wandering around in New Orleans during the day invariably means ducking into a restaurant, a bar, a store, a someplace to cool off or for protection from one of the steamy rainstorms that so often punctuate the afternoon. Spend enough time in the city and you’ll no doubt wander into a used bookstore. (that’s an assumption, of course, dear reader of this blog) The city has quite a few, each with a strong whiff of history and more than a spot of dust. I am grateful to have been to many and, as is my pattern, I invariably drift to the local section, the shelves stocked with books about New Orleans.

In my last trip I came across several copies – in several bookstores – of Christopher Benfey’s Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate Chopin and George Washington Cable. Benfey, a professor of literature with a named chair at Mount Holyoke College, is a well respected scholar. This is his first book, penned in the late 1990s. It is a deeply researched critical study, a strong academic work that has somehow found its way in bulk to tourist bookstores. More than a examination of a short period in Degas’ life, the book is also more than a three-subject biography. It is a nuanced investigation into creative production during a very traumatic juncture in the city’s troubled history. Degas’ trip in the autumn of 1872 coincided with Reconstruction politics, a rise in racial hatred and the creation of the White League, a racist group that briefly took over the city in 1874.

Despite its immediately accessible title, this book is not a quick read for those expecting a holiday memoir. It pursues a rigorous cultural argument, grounded in history. Benfey sketches out the key families in the city, the tangled relationships, and the complex social structure of Creoles, free Blacks, formerly enslaved Blacks, whites, and those with French citizenship in this book. The destructive power of racism is the driving force shaping lives, opportunities and families. Benfey gives attention to Degas and his art, to be sure, but his heart in this book is with literature and criticism against the backdrop of race in post Civil War.

The failures of Reconstruction haunt American history and culture. Similarly, they haunt this book. Under Benfey’s eye, the romantic cultural production of the period is inextricably tied a dark history.

The next time you visit New Orleans, if you’re looking for an easy thrill, take a ghost tour. Stroll and admire the architecture and google the history of buildings. And if you want a coffee table book, you’ll find many with glossy photos. But if you want something substantial, consider Degas in New Orleans. It is a solid scholarly treatise.

David Potash

Reconstruction Culture In The Crescent City

In Praise of the Accessible: Penguin’s Collection of Japanese Short Stories

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A conversation with a colleague who is deep into Japanese history started me thinking: what have I read recently from Japan? Or by Japanese writers? There was a stretch when many I know were referencing Haruki Murikami, but beyond his work? While I may be up on some popular culture, my knowledge of Japanese fiction and literature is minuscule. The discussion called for action, so I picked up a well-reviewed book: The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories. Translated by Jay Rubin, a respected Japanologist, the book is accessible and fascinating. It is a very good read.

The book is organized by themes, but it is neither chronological nor scrupulous in its categorization. There’s great variety in topic, style and intent. Some of the 34 pieces are quite short and others might be considered novellas. The collection strikes a respectable balance between encouragement and awe. Why awe? It is humbling to read so much absolutely brilliant writing from a culture of which I know so little. It’s a compelling introduction that calls for more trips to the library.

There’s too much in the book to cover here, but I do want to call out a few items that stood out. Betsukayu Minoru‘s “Factory Town” is very funny with a tone reminiscent of classic Russian satire. “Patriotism” by Mishima Yukio gave me goosebumps. He was a complex artist, a nationalist with deep sympathies to a romantic tradition. The story celebrates ritual suicide, but it’s impossible to read it as a humanist and not have it resonate with sorrow. Seirai Yuichi’s “Insects” is haunting, too. With a background of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, it humanizes loss and love.

Reading is a safe yet challenging way to de-center one’s viewpoint – be it philosophical, geographical, historical or cultural. The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories took me on a trip without leaving the house. I encourage you to consider going on a similar journey.

David Potash

In Praise of the Accessible: Penguin’s Collection of Japanese Short Stories

Picturing the Ruins: Catskills Palimpsests

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Having recently moved to the Catskills in New York State, I have been wandering about and reading, trying to make sense of the land and its history. It is simply beautiful country. Woods and forests, with dramatic vistas, rolling hills and meadows make for an entrancing landscape. The elevation is higher than New York City, affording clearer and cooler air. It is rural yet surprisingly near the built environment, especially when thinking about time and not distance. Making sense of it is a fascinating project.

My attraction to the region is shared by many. Since the 1800s Gothamites have been heading up to the Catskills, for vacations and a different sort of life. Thousands took the plunge during the pandemic. Remote work made it a viable region for a first home and the areas has been changing. Vacant properties were snapped up as significant investment moved in. All the recent action, though, pales in comparison the boom years before and after World War II. Then, American Jews visited the Catskills by the hundreds of thousands. It was a period of big hotels, world famous entertainers, and country luxury for a growing Jewish middle class. Known as the Borscht Belt, the Catskills played an outsize role in American cultural history.

The famous hotels have all long since shuttered, as have the spas, restaurants and pools. Signs of the downturn could be discerned as early as the late 1950s. Greater shifts took place in the following two decades. By the 1990s, the New York State Catskill tourism industry had declined tremendously. Jews and others seeking a break from the city had many options. The Borscht Belt was no more.

Traces of those boom years, though, can still be found. That evidence is the heart of Marisa Scheinfeld’s The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America’s Jewish Vacationland. Scheinfeld is a skilled photographer. Presented are her studies of abandoned buildings, forgotten sites, neglected properties, and traces of a special past. Accompanying the rich and haunting collection of images are essays by Jenna Weissman Joselit and Stefan Kanfer.

Kanfer, a journalist, offers something akin to an expanded introduction. Joselit, a historian and scholar, gives the reader something different. She is an expert in vernacular culture. Joselit guides us in different ways of looking, understanding and appreciating the images. The pictures contain both what we see and what hovers, perhaps as an imagined, or projected, history.

The Borscht Belt presents first as a coffee table book, a collection of striking photographs. Spend time with it, though, and it morphs into something different, a window into a region and its history. Photographs always come with claims of verity, of sureness of particular spaces at exact times. They are irreducible. Our minds, on the other hand, make sense and understand photos in a context. That’s one of the powers of good photography, for while the picture is immediate and locked, it has the ability to provoke, forcing speculation and connections. Many of Scheinfeld’s photos are able to do just that.

I have long been interested in images of leisure spaces, for I find them packed with potential emotion. The idea of leisure, letting one’s guard down in pursuit of pleasure, compels some level of vulnerability. It speaks, after all, to our wishes and wants. The very nature of desire – be it for fine food, a thrill at an amusement part, or a fresh air from a mountaintop – speaks to what is lacking. That’s one of the more powerful ways in which historical studies of amusement helps to expand social constraints and ambitions. The Jews in the Borscht Belt wanted their take on the American dream – good food, the fresh air of the country far from the city, and the spaces where they could socialize, enjoy family and entertainment, and be themselves. The Borscht Belt was vital in making that happen. Scheinfeld’s photos are more than studies of ruins. They are remnants of a generation’s wishes and aspirations. Appreciation of the hopes of others can connect us as humans. Until reading The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America’s Jewish Vacationland, I had never imagined that a photograph of chairs could stir my heart.

David Potash

Picturing the Ruins: Catskills Palimpsests

American History the Democratic Purpose

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Heather Cox Richardson is an outstanding historian. I first became aware of her work on the Civil War and Reconstruction years ago. Her scholarship is rigorous, her prose clear and compelling. If you were teaching a course on American history in the latter part of the nineteenth century, you would assign her books – and students would read them. She is that good.

In the past decade plus, Richardson’s work has moved into the public sphere as she engaged with broader issues. Richardson has a daily substack newsletter with many followers, a podcast series, and is balancing her traditional scholarship with a nuanced look at contemporary affairs. She describes herself as a “Lincoln Republican.” What makes so much of her writing engaging is her rigor. Richardson finds ways to build themes from facts, not assertions, and she respects consistency and detail.

In 2023, Richardson wrote Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America. It is a big-picture book, a work of American history that contrasts two themes: authoritarianism and democracy, over the centuries. Richardson moves quickly and selectively in the book, framing events in support of her larger argument. It is not a work of discovery, but rather one of explication. Democracy Awakening is history done tidy, with little time for the complexities and contradictions that render her other works so fascinating. Accordingly, I found it to be an unusual book, one that has me wondering about what history can – and cannot – and what sticks in the public’s mind.

Democracy Awakening is strongest, and most effective, in reminding readers that authoritarian tendencies are deeply woven into American political life. Moreover, these impulses have been vibrant and essential to the creation of the United States. Much of our history is one of conflict, which demands cohesion. Richardson, accordingly, is quite good at identifying the persistence of this strand. We tend to miss these, often assuming that the contingencies that have made today possible were rife with meaning. Some are and some are not.

On the other hand, America’s equally ambitious democratic impulse is a national aspiration. This matters a great deal and it is where Richardson’s values align. She notes, as we all have to when looking at facts, that the march towards democratic rights for all has not taken place in a straight line. The journey has been complicated and remains so today. What that means for history is that it is difficult to align historical figures, movements and events, into clear and consistent categories. The strength and importance of history, in other words, comes from the close analysis of how, when and why we can make supported claims for where and how we track and make sense of those changes.

Richardson does this and does it well. In Democracy Awakening, though, she gives more of her attention to the theme than perhaps in some of her other books. That left this reader wanting more complexity and contradiction. For it is in wrestling with these problems that Richardson’s skill truly shines.

David Potash

American History the Democratic Purpose

Triumph and Freedom – Fighting the FLDS

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An American religious cult based in the far west, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) is a polygamist group that split from the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) more than a century ago. For decades the FLDS has attracted concern and attention from law enforcement, often because of its sexual abuse of girls and casting out young men. The FLDS believes that its leader is the one and only voice of God. Accordingly, FLDS membership, family structures, work, and nearly all aspects of life is controlled and directed. The current leader, or prophet, of the FLDS, issues edicts from prison, where he is serving a life sentence for sexual assaults and other crimes. The FLDS has been covered extensively in the media, from news stories to documentaries. More is on the way as people escape the cult and attempt to create new lives, integrating into the modern world. A nativist domestic cult that has harmed thousands, the FLDS has patriarchy and the subjection of women at its core, along with violence and white supremacy. The FLDS is an evil organization.

Two memoirs, promoted at a local library, opened a window into life in the FLDS. Breaking Free: How I Escaped Polygamy, the FLDS Cult, and My Father, Warren Jeffs, by Rachel Jeffs, is the story of life in the cult and the author’s escape. Carolyn Jessop’s Triumph: Life After the Cult – A Survivor’s Lessons is written from a different place, as the author left the FLDS years before and is now working to free others from its grasp. Both Jeffs and Jessop hail from FLDS leadership families. Both authors had extremely difficult childhoods, were abused, and were forced into arranged marriages. Family ties – and through FLDS practice of arranged marriages and multiple wifes, the connections are very complex – supported and constrained both women. They love their children and their family members, yet at the same time, so many of the extended family and FLDS practices were toxic. Both women are heroes, fighting for agency and independence. The journey to agency, though, is neither quick or nor linear. It is no surprise that both actively resist being labeled as victims.

It is fascinating to learn how both women, and their friends and family, have wrestled with their personal histories and gaining independence. We are, by nature, social and our understanding of ourselves and our world is shaped by those around us. Change is difficult, and for these authors, it has required time and great strength. One cheers for them as they fight for decency and agency.

For those interested in what life was like in the FLDS, Jeffs’ account is the more immediate. To better understand how the FLDS used laws and structures to maintain power, Jessop’s book is more helpful. Read in conjunction, the two memoirs offer something else – a lesson on how extreme patriarchy functions. It is toxic, antithetical to democratic values, and denies people – especially women – anything akin to real humanity. This is not abstract academic gender theory. One does not need to study the Taliban or ancient history. The FLDS offers a close to home primer on the malevolent ways that religion, sex and family structures can persist, even today, while causing great harm.

The books are harrowing, frightening, and very personal. These are memoirs. The authors write directly, from the heart. Despite the hardships portrayed, ultimately, both books affirm the power of individual growth, choice and agency.

David Potash

Triumph and Freedom – Fighting the FLDS

Liberators & The Good Fight

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There is absolutely nothing as good as a well-written history book to improve one’s perspective. Thinking that we might have it tough today? Worried about leadership and the direction of the country or the world? Look no further than a study of how the United States navigated through World War II to make one grateful and appreciative. Ten years ago A.J. Baime wrote The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm America at War. It remains relevant, informative, and a gripping read.

Baime is a journalist, author, and public speaker who knows how to spin a tale. His 2009 book, Go Like Hell, was a best-seller that later became the movie Ford v. Ferrari. Baime is able to frame big-picture themes while rendering them personal, giving readers a real sense of the people involved. That skill is clearly evident in Arsenal of Democracy. It is a book about an extraordinarily important issue – how American industrial might was essential to the Allies effort to win World War II – with close attention to the dramatic story of three generations in the Ford family. While it might not be the most comprehensive or inclusive way to tell the complex history of the rise of the American armament industry in the 1940s, it is nonetheless memorable and very entertaining.

Understanding the history requires an appreciation of overlapping and intersecting lines of power and influence. Internationally, the rise of Hitler’s Germany was not understood by many at the time to be an existential threat to democratic values. Baime sketches this deftly, using Charles Lindbergh as an example of a pacifist, apologist, and political naif. US domestic policy was of even greater importance. Baime goes quickly here, using President Roosevelt as the primary lens through which to explain planning and policy. There is little in Arsenal of Democracy on the New Deal, US industrial policy, or even domestic economics. What Baime does explain well is the economics of Ford Motors and its extraordinary rise from start up to one of the globe’s most profitable and important companies, all within a few decades. Ford is where Baime anchors this history.

Henry Ford, of course, is the dramatic focus. Brilliant, driven, and more than a little anti-Semitic and eccentric, Ford was one of the most significant and divisive figures of the early 1900s. Baime is a generous biographer, at times giving the elder Ford the benefit of the doubt. He characterizes Ford’s son, Edsel, in tragic terms, while Henry Ford II is not fully examined as a figure. The back and forth of these three men over the years is at the heart of The Arsenal of Democracy.

Garnering less attention in the book are the technical aspects of what Ford and other companies did during the war. The production of the Liberator, a heavy bomber, was very important. So, too, was the rise of the shipbuilding industry, the creation of weapons, and much more. Curious readers will have to look elsewhere to gain a broader comprehension of the many different ways that the American economy responded to the challenges of World War II. The period experienced extremely complicated labor history, massive racial strife, gender issues, and much more – all while the very existence of the democratic west was under immediate and dire threat. This history is one thread in a larger and vitally important history.

There is so very much to recommend in Arsenal of Democracy. Baime has made complicated history intelligible, has highlight the right issues, and reminded us all of the great debt we owe those that fought to preserve democracy in World War II. While far from the final word, it is nevertheless a much appreciated history that invites further investigation. What more could one want from history?

David Potash

Liberators & The Good Fight

Democracy Reconsidered Decades On

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More important, more needed, and very much contested, democratic values and structures are increasingly under the microscope. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of democracy in its many forms is a vitally important issue for the United States and, in many ways, the entire world. How do we govern, govern ourselves, and make good faith efforts to live fair and just lives in unfair and unjust times? There are no easy answers.

My knowledge and questions about democracy have been substantially aided of late through reading an important book, one that I missed for decades. First published in 1998 (with a big thanks to my daughter for the recommendation), Carol C. Gould’s Rethinking Democracy: Freedom and Social Cooperation in Politics, Economy and Society is a rigorously argued work of political philosophy. Gould makes bold claims, offers tightly structured arguments, and systematically advances and critiques other’s work in the field. Rethinking Democracy challenges established thinking (at least at the time it was written), and for someone new to book, clearly has made an outsize impact on the field. Be warned, though: this is not a book to skim. It requires close reading and attention. Gould is a very well-respected scholar whose work spans disciplines and centuries.

At a high-level, Gould’s agenda is this volume has multiple aims. She looks to establish democratic decision-making and processes as foundational to social and economic life, not just politics. Democracy, in other words, cannot only be found at the ballot box. It matters in the workplace and in our lives. To achieve this claim, Gould carefully builds an understanding of freedom, liberty and rights that affirm both the individualist perspective and the demands of social equality and cooperation. That is an important shift. Many think of freedom as an individual’s right to do what they want, and that this kind of freedom is essential to a democracy. Others consider freedom that can only be established through a cooperation and structured equality. Think of socialism in this example.

Gould’s argument is multi-layered. Along like lines, Gould acknowledges the power of negative and positive freedom as a construct (“no one can constrain me” and “I can do what I want”). She demonstrates the ineffectiveness of relying on the framework to construct a foundation for democracy. This takes a lot of work, for Gould does not simply propose. Instead, she summarizes thinking, considers the benefits and shortcomings of other thinkers, and constructs her arguments deliberately and with purpose. The very definitions of freedom and equality are sought. Although Gould claims the book to be constructive, not critical, it is only through her systematic work that construction takes place.

Freedom, Gould persuasively argues, is a condition for individual self-development, which is essential our purpose and lives as humans. Self-development is not atomistic and isolated. Instead, it is only possible in conditions of cooperation and participation. Democracy in a healthy state, accordingly, offers individual self-development and social cooperation. It has an ethical and ontological foundation.

Multiple books and articles have emerged in the decades since Rethinking Democracy was published, as well as fields within philosophy. Social ontology stands as a good example. One not be a philosophy student or philosopher to appreciate the potential consequences and questions that emerge from Gould’s ideas. Rethinking Democracy is a powerful work.

I plan on more reading and research, based on this book and subsequent scholarship. Learning more about how to advance democratic values strikes me as a most relevant area of inquiry. And if current affairs has one thinking, it is clear that there is much to learn and consider.

David Potash

Democracy Reconsidered Decades On

Elderly Democracies: Hospice or New Life?

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David Runciman, a professor of politics of Cambridge University, is a prolific scholar whose work resonates in the public sphere. He podcasts, appears regularly on television and other media, and has an impact on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. An academic with a scholarly legacy, Runciman has the rare ability to make complicated subjects accessible while remaining appreciative of their complexity. These and other skills are in full display in How Democracy Ends, Runciman’s 2018 publication. Clearly written and organized, the book makes the claim that democracy, in particular American democracy, “is going through a mid-life crisis.” It is a refreshing and provocative lens through which to understand the passivity, anger, and impulsive behavior found in much contemporary politics.

At pains to recognize the lessons of history while stressing that the path is no guide to the future, Runciman’s book draws on the scholarship of political scientists as well as a comparativist perspective. It is structured around three broad themes or ways of imagining democracy’s demise: coup, catastrophe, and technological takeover. Runciman’s overall perspective is somewhat gloomy but not deterministic. He believes that therapy for the middle aged, be it individual or system of government, can shake things up and lead to new and healthier behavior.

The section on coup looks at the many ways that conspiracies can end democratic rule. Trump’s presidency figures prominently, even though the book was written well before the 2020 election. Runciman notes that in healthy democracy, the analogy of a civil war without violence is apt. Consensus is illusory. Instead, one finds continuous and vigorous debate. That process can be subverted when a small group is able to seize control of the system through a coup. The 1967 coup in Greece is examined and contrasted with more recent upheavals due to debt. The issues, dynamics and threat to democracy simply did not play out the same way in Greece in 2015. The 1961 attempted coup in France failed, as did the 2016 attempt in Turkey, yet the 2017 coup in Zimbabwe was successful. Runciman argues that a successful and coordinated conspiracy is essential, yet not determinative, of a successful coup.

The section on catastrophe looks at three possibilities for democracy’s end: through war, through poisoning the environment, or through evil. For the latter, think of the Nazi’s or other forms of state sponsored killing. The challenge that Runciman stresses is the disconnect between the bread and butter issues of everyday politics and the more abstract and long-term ways that these threats might materialize. Through this and other chapters, Runciman weaves into the narrative the works of scholars and examples from history and around the world. In the last section, he focuses on the possibility of technology bringing about democracy’s end. The section also looks at the flow of information through various media and the elusiveness of “truth” in shaping decision-making.

Runciman concludes the book with a reflection on what might be better, what could help democracy. He is to be congratulated for his candor in admitting that he does not have ideal solutions. Admitting the appeal of promised solutions to many voters that may reduce individual agency and choice, Runciman posits the dignity inherent in a healthier democracy. He sees some hope in technology offering greater freedoms. To get to this point, though, Runciman warns that we have much learning to do.

If there was one way to improve the work, it would be to give greater consideration to economic factors as well as to the tremendous dislocations affecting more than a hundred of million of displaced peoples. These issues, I contend, will and do have great impact on local, national, and international politics.

How Democracy Ends is a thoughtful and provocative work. It raises more questions than providing answers, and that is fine. Runciman does not pretend to know the future. His work does make, though, for significantly more informed prognostication.

David Potash

Elderly Democracies: Hospice or New Life?