Description: Timothy Snyder has been called "the leading interpreter of our dark times." As a historian, he has offered us startling reinterpretations of political collapse and mass killing. As a scholar, he has turned that knowledge toward advice and prediction, working against authoritarianisms. His book On Tyranny has inspired millions around the world to fight for freedom. Freedom is the great democratic commitment, but, as Snyder argues, we have lost sight of what it means, and this is leading us to crisis. Too many of us see freedom as the absence of state power: we think we are free if we can do and say what we please, and protect ourselves from government overreach. But true freedom is not so much freedom from, as freedom to: freedom to prosper, to risk futures we choose by working together. Freedom is the value that makes all other values.
