I’m interested in learning more about authoritarianism, specific (arguably) authoritarian regimes (especially China, Russia, and North Korea), democratic backsliding, the possibility of stable and/or global totalitarianism, and related topics.
As such, I’d be interested in:
- people’s thoughts on which books that are relevant to those topics might be worth reading or might be worth skipping
- links to good summaries/reviews/notes about relevant books
(ETA: I'd also be interested in recommendations of online courses or lecture series on these topics.)
I imagine such a collection could be useful for other people too. I’ll also share the relevant books and links that I know about already. (One type of book I don’t already know of examples of is biographies of relevant political leaders; please feel free to recommend some biographies of that kind!)
The cluster of topics I’m pointing to is intentionally broad. If you’re not sure whether a book/link is relevant enough, please mention it anyway, and just say something about what the book/link seems relevant to.
(See also Books / book reviews on nuclear risk, WMDs, great power war? and Collection of sources related to dystopias and "robust totalitarianism".)
One point in favor of 1984 and Animal Farm is that Orwell was intimitely familiar with real-life totalitarian regimes, having fought for the communists in Spain etc. His writing is more credible IMO because he's criticizing the side he fought for rather than the side he fought against. (I mean, he's criticizing both, for sure--his critiques apply equally to fascism--but most authors who warn us of dystopian futures are warning us against their outgroup, so to speak, whereas Orwell is warning us against what used to be his ingroup.)