Timothy Snyder

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About Timothy Snyder

Timothy Snyder is the Housum Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1997, where he was a British Marshall Scholar. Before joining the faculty at Yale in 2001, he held fellowships in Paris, Vienna, and Warsaw, and an Academy Scholarship at Harvard. He has spent some ten years in Europe, and speaks five and reads ten European languages. Among his publications are several award-winning books, all of which have been translated: Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (1998, revised edition 2016); The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (2003); Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (2005); The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke (2008); and Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010). Bloodlands won twelve awards including the Emerson Prize in the Humanities, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Leipzig Award for European Understanding, and the Hannah Arendt Prize in Political Thought. It has been translated into more than thirty languages, was named to twelve book-of-the-year lists, and was a bestseller in six countries. His forthcoming book, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, will be published by Crown Books in September 2015 and in twenty-one foreign editions thereafter. Snyder is also the co-editor of Wall Around the West: State Borders and Immigration Controls in Europe and North America (2001) and Stalin and Europe: Terror, War, Domination (2013). He helped Tony Judt to compose a thematic history of political ideas and intellectuals in politics, Thinking the Twentieth Century (2012). Some of Snyder's essays on the Ukrainian revolution were published in in Russian and Ukrainian as Ukrainian History, Russian Politics, European Futures (2014). Other essays will be published in Czech as The Politics of Life and Death (2015). Snyder sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Modern European History and East European Politics and Societies. His scholarly articles have appeared in Past and Present, the Journal of Cold War Studies, and other journals; he has also written for The New York Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, and The New Republic as well as for The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and other newspapers. Snyder was the recipient of an inaugural Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2015. He is a member of the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and sits on the advisory councils of the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research and other organizations.

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Books By Timothy Snyder

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On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century Feb 28, 2017

by Timothy Snyder

( 7,307 )

$9.99

#1 New York Times Bestseller • A historian of fascism offers a guide for surviving and resisting America's turn towards authoritarianism.

The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.

On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.

"Mr. Snyder is a rising public intellectual unafraid to make bold connections between past and present." —The New York Times

Other Formats: Audible Audiobook , Paperback

Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary Sep 8, 2020

by Timothy Snyder

( 53 )

$10.99

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller On Tyranny comes an impassioned condemnation of America's coronavirus response and an urgent call to rethink health and freedom.

On December 29, 2019, historian Timothy Snyder fell gravely ill. Unable to stand, barely able to think, he waited for hours in an emergency room before being correctly diagnosed and rushed into surgery. Over the next few days, as he clung to life and the first light of a new year came through his window, he found himself reflecting on the fragility of health, not recognized in America as a human right but without which all rights and freedoms have no meaning.

And that was before the pandemic. We have since watched American hospitals, long understaffed and undersupplied, buckling under waves of coronavirus patients. The federal government made matters worse through willful ignorance, misinformation, and profiteering. Our system of commercial medicine failed the ultimate test, and thousands of Americans died.

In this eye-opening cri de coeur, Snyder traces the societal forces that led us here and outlines the lessons we must learn to survive. In examining some of the darkest moments of recent history and of his own life, Snyder finds glimmers of hope and principles that could lead us out of our current malaise. Only by enshrining healthcare as a human right, elevating the authority of doctors and medical knowledge, and planning for our children’s future can we create an America where everyone is truly free.

Other Formats: Audible Audiobook , Paperback

The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America Apr 3, 2018

by Timothy Snyder

( 675 )

$8.99

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of On Tyranny comes a stunning new chronicle of the rise of authoritarianism from Russia to Europe and America.

“A brilliant analysis of our time.”—Karl Ove Knausgaard, The New Yorker

With the end of the Cold War, the victory of liberal democracy seemed final. Observers declared the end of history, confident in a peaceful, globalized future. This faith was misplaced. Authoritarianism returned to Russia, as Putin found fascist ideas that could be used to justify rule by the wealthy. In the 2010s, it has spread from east to west, aided by Russian warfare in Ukraine and cyberwar in Europe and the United States.

Russia found allies among nationalists, oligarchs, and radicals everywhere, and its drive to dissolve Western institutions, states, and values found resonance within the West itself. The rise of populism, the British vote against the EU, and the election of Donald Trump were all Russian goals, but their achievement reveals the vulnerability of Western societies.

In this forceful and unsparing work of contemporary history, based on vast research as well as personal reporting, Snyder goes beyond the headlines to expose the true nature of the threat to democracy and law. To understand the challenge is to see, and perhaps renew, the fundamental political virtues offered by tradition and demanded by the future. By revealing the stark choices before us--between equality or oligarchy, individuality or totality, truth and falsehood--Snyder restores our understanding of the basis of our way of life, offering a way forward in a time of terrible uncertainty.

Other Formats: Audible Audiobook , Hardcover , Paperback

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin Oct 2, 2012

by Timothy Snyder

( 917 )

$14.99

From the bestselling author of On Tyranny comes the definitive history of Hitler's and Stalin's wars against the civilians of Europe in World War II.
Americans call the Second World War "The Good War."But before it even began, America's wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens--and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war's end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.

Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.

Bloodlands won twelve awards including the Emerson Prize in the Humanities, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Leipzig Award for European Understanding, and the Hannah Arendt Prize in Political Thought. It has been translated into more than thirty languages, was named to twelve book-of-the-year lists, and was a bestseller in six countries.

Other Formats: Audible Audiobook , Hardcover , Paperback , Audio CD

Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning Sep 8, 2015

by Timothy Snyder

( 308 )

$14.99

A brilliant, haunting, and profoundly original portrait of the defining tragedy of our time.

In this epic history of extermination and survival, Timothy Snyder presents a new explanation of the great atrocity of the twentieth century, and reveals the risks that we face in the twenty-first. Based on new sources from eastern Europe and forgotten testimonies from Jewish survivors, Black Earth recounts the mass murder of the Jews as an event that is still close to us, more comprehensible than we would like to think, and thus all the more terrifying.

The Holocaust began in a dark but accessible place, in Hitler's mind, with the thought that the elimination of Jews would restore balance to the planet and allow Germans to win the resources they desperately needed. Such a worldview could be realized only if Germany destroyed other states, so Hitler's aim was a colonial war in Europe itself. In the zones of statelessness, almost all Jews died. A few people, the righteous few, aided them, without support from institutions. Much of the new research in this book is devoted to understanding these extraordinary individuals. The almost insurmountable difficulties they faced only confirm the dangers of state destruction and ecological panic. These men and women should be emulated, but in similar circumstances few of us would do so.

By overlooking the lessons of the Holocaust, Snyder concludes, we have misunderstood modernity and endangered the future. The early twenty-first century is coming to resemble the early twentieth, as growing preoccupations with food and water accompany ideological challenges to global order. Our world is closer to Hitler's than we like to admit, and saving it requires us to see the Holocaust as it was -- and ourselves as we are.

Groundbreaking, authoritative, and utterly absorbing, Black Earth reveals a Holocaust that is not only history but warning.

Other Formats: Audible Audiobook , Hardcover , Paperback , Audio CD

The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus 1569-1999 Jan 11, 2003

by Mr. Timothy Snyder

( 55 )

$22.56

Modern nationalism in northeastern Europe has often led to violence and then reconciliation between nations with bloody pasts. In this fascinating book, Timothy Snyder traces the emergence of Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Belarusian nationhood over four centuries, discusses various atrocities (including the first account of the massive Ukrainian-Polish ethnic cleansings of the 1940s), and examines Polands recent successful negotiations with its newly independent Eastern neighbors, as it has channeled national interest toward peace.

Other Formats: Paperback

The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke Jun 3, 2008

by Timothy Snyder

( 40 )

$12.99

Wilhelm Von Habsburg wore the uniform of the Austrian officer, the court regalia of a Habsburg archduke, the simple suit of a Parisian exile, the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and, every so often, a dress. He could handle a saber, a pistol, a rudder, or a golf club; he handled women by necessity and men for pleasure. He spoke the Italian of his archduchess mother, the German of his archduke father, the English of his British royal friends, the Polish of the country his father wished to rule, and the Ukrainian of the land Wilhelm wished to rule himself. In this exhilarating narrative history, prize-winning historian Timothy D. Snyder offers an indelible portrait of an aristocrat whose life personifies the wrenching upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century, as the rule of empire gave way to the new politics of nationalism. Coming of age during the First World War, Wilhelm repudiated his family to fight alongside Ukrainian peasants in hopes that he would become their king. When this dream collapsed he became, by turns, an ally of German imperialists, a notorious French lover, an angry Austrian monarchist, a calm opponent of Hitler, and a British spy against Stalin. Played out in Europe's glittering capitals and bloody battlefields, in extravagant ski resorts and dank prison cells, The Red Prince captures an extraordinary moment in the history of Europe, in which the old order of the past was giving way to an undefined future-and in which everything, including identity itself, seemed up for grabs.

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Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz, 1872-1905 Nov 16, 2017

by Timothy Snyder

( 1 )

$29.04

Timothy Snyder opens a new path in the understanding of modern nationalism and twentieth-century socialism by presenting the often overlooked life of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz, an important Polish thinker at the beginning of the twentieth century. During his brief life in Poland, Paris, and Vienna, Kelles-Krauz influenced or infuriated most of the leaders of the various socialist movements of Central Europe and France. His central ideas ultimately were not accepted by the socialist mainstream at the time of his death. However, a century later, we see that they anticipated late twentieth-century understanding on the importance of nationalism as a social force and the parameters of socialism in political theory and praxis. Kelles-Krauz was one of the only theoreticians of his age to advocate Jewish national rights as being equivalent to, for example, Polish national rights, and he correctly saw the struggle for national sovereignty as being central to future events in Europe. This was the first major monograph in English devoted to Kelles-Krauz, and it includes maps and personal photographs of Kelles-Krauz, his colleagues, and his family.

Other Formats: Audible Audiobook , Hardcover , Paperback , Audio CD

Sobre la tiranía (Rústica Ensayo) (Spanish Edition) Mar 22, 2017

by Timothy Snyder , Alejandro Pradera Sánchez

( 31 )

$9.99

La historia no se repite, pero sí alecciona. Tanto el nazismo como el comunismo fueron reacciones a la globalización: a las desigualdades reales o imaginadas que creaba, y a la aparente impotencia de las democracias para afrontarlas. Eran movimientos en los que un líder o un partido decían dar voz al pueblo, prometían protegerlo de las amenazas globales existentes y rechazaban la razón en favor del mito. La historia europea nos muestra que las sociedades pueden quebrarse, las democracias pueden caer, la ética puede venirse abajo y la gente corriente puede encontrarse en situaciones inimaginables. Hoy en día nos resultaría muy útil comprender por qué. La historia puede familiarizar y puede servir de advertencia. No somos más sabios que los europeos que vieron cómo la democracia se rendía ante el autoritarismo durante el siglo xx. Pero cuando el orden político parece amenazado, nuestra ventaja es que podemos aprender de su experiencia para impedir el avance de la tiranía. Ahora es un buen momento para hacerlo.

Other Formats: Paperback

Stalin and Europe: Imitation and Domination, 1928-1953 May 30, 2014

by Timothy Snyder , Ray Brandon

$30.39

The Soviet Union was the largest state in the twentieth-century world, but its repressive power and terrible ambition were most clearly on display in Europe. Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union transformed itself and then all of the European countries with which it came into contact. This volume considers each aspect of the encounter of Stalin with Europe: the attempt to create a kind of European state by accelerating the European model of industrial development in the USSR; mass murder in anticipation of a war against European powers; the actual contact with Europe's greatest power, Nazi Germany, first as ally and then as enemy; four years of war fought chiefly on Soviet territory and bringing untold millions of deaths, including much of the Holocaust; and finally the reestablishment of the Soviet system, not just in prewar territory of the USSR, but in Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, the Baltic States, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and East Germany.

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback

Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine Nov 28, 2005

by Timothy Snyder , William T. Hassler

( 3 )

$9.99

The forgotten protagonist of this true account aspired to be a cubist painter in his native Kyïv. In a Europe remade by the First World War, his talents led him to different rolesintelligence operative, powerful statesman, underground activist, lifelong conspirator. Henryk Józewski directed Polish intelligence in Ukraine, governed the borderland region of Volhynia in the interwar years, worked in the anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet underground during the Second World War, and conspired against Poland’s Stalinists until his arrest in 1953. His personal story, important in its own right, sheds new light on the foundations of Soviet power and on the ideals of those who resisted it. By following the arc of Józewski’s life, this book demonstrates that his tolerant policies toward Ukrainians in Volhynia were part of Poland’s plans to roll back the communist threat.

The book mines archival materials, many available only since the fall of communism, to rescue Józewski, his Polish milieu, and his Ukrainian dream from oblivion. An epilogue connects his legacy to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the democratic revolution in Ukraine in 2004.

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback

Na contramão da liberdade: A guinada autoritária nas democracias contemporâneas (Portuguese Edition) Apr 11, 2019

by Timothy Snyder , Berilo Vargas

( 17 )

$7.99

Em uma época em que a ascensão do populismo e do autoritarismo assombra a democracia, Snyder mergulha na história russa, ucraniana, europeia e norte-americana para entender como chegamos aqui.

Na contramão da liberdade é a tentativa de Timothy Snyder de entender o novo tipo de autoritarismo que emergiu de um conjunto de eventos interligados mundialmente, da Rússia aos Estados Unidos, em uma época em que a factualidade em si foi posta em xeque.
Essa vigorosa obra de história contemporânea é baseada em uma vasta pesquisa e atravessada pela experiência pessoal do autor. Costurando fontes em russo, ucraniano, polonês, alemão, francês e inglês, Snyder vai além das manchetes para expor a verdadeira natureza da ameaça à democracia e aos direitos individuais.
Cada capítulo é dedicado a um ano e a um episódio em particular — a volta do pensamento totalitário (2011); o colapso da política democrática na Rússia (2012); o ataque russo à União Europeia (2013); a revolução na Ucrânia e a subsequente invasão russa (2014); a difusão da ficção política na Rússia, na Europa e nos Estados Unidos (2015); e a eleição de Donald Trump para a presidência norte-americana (2016).

"Estamos rapidamente caminhando para o fascismo. Snyder nos deixa sem ilusões sobre nós mesmos." — Svetlana Aleksiévitch, vencedora do prêmio Nobel de literatura em 2015

"Uma análise brilhante e perturbadora, indispensável para entender a crise política que assola o mundo." — Yuval Noah Harari, autor de Sapiens e Homo Deus

Other Formats: Paperback

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