Mt. Pleasant Reads

Surviving Autocracy

Come read with us!

We'll be greeting 2025 by reading Surviving Autocracy by M. Gessen, National Book Award-winning journalist and author. 

This incisive book provides an essential guide to understanding and recovering from the calamitous corrosion of American democracy over the past few years. Thanks to the special perspective that is the legacy of a Soviet childhood and two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia, Gessen has a sixth sense for the manifestations of autocracy—and the unique cross-cultural fluency to delineate their emergence to Americans. Gessen not only anatomizes the corrosion of the institutions and cultural norms we hoped would save us but also tells us the story of how a short few years changed us from a people who saw ourselves as a nation of immigrants to a populace haggling over a border wall, heirs to a degraded sense of truth, meaning, and possibility. Surviving Autocracy is an inventory of ravages and a call to account but also a beacon to recovery—and to the hope of what comes next. -- Provided by publisher 

All genres and readers are welcome. Reading the club selection is not a requirement to attend (just be forewarned that there will be spoilers). Titles will be decided by group members. A limited number of copies will be set aside at the Mt. Pleasant Library and are available via OverDrive/Libby. 

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