From a bestselling, National Book Award-winning journalist, an essential guide to understanding, resisting, and recovering from the ravages of our tumultuous times.In the run-up to the 2016 election, Masha Gessen stood out from other journalists for the ability to convey the ominous significance of Donald Trump's speech and behavior, unprecedented in a national candidate. Within forty-eight hours of his victory, the essay "Autocracy: Rules for Survival" had gone viral, and Gessen's coverage of his norm-smashing presidency became essential reading for a citizenry struggling to wrap their heads around the unimaginable. 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 signs of autocracy-and the unique cross-cultural fluency to delineate its emergence to Americans. This incisive book provides an indispensable overview of the calamitous trajectory of the past few years. Gessen not only highlights the corrosion of the media, the judiciary, and the cultural norms we hoped would save us but also tells us the story of how a short few years have 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 but also a beacon to recovery-or to enduring, and resisting, an ongoing assault.

STELLAR RECEPTION: Critics, booksellers, and readers have embraced Surviving Autocracy like a thrown life preserver, hailing their writing as "ambitious, timely, insightful, and unsparing" (Washington Post), "essential" (O Magazine), and "harrowing, compassionate, and important" (San Francisco Chronicle).THE VOICE THAT TRANSLATES OUR ERA TO US: Gessen's trenchant and extremely influential essays and commentary have definitively shaped our understanding of how we have arrived at our current moment. Readers look to them to make sense of our complicated, upsetting, often overwhelming geopolitical world. No matter the outcome of the 2020 election, readers will turn to them for perspective and guidance.MEDIA ROCK STAR: Gessen is on the A-list NPR, MSNBC, CNN, Samantha Bee, Jonathan Van Ness, and more. In an insanely crowded 24-hour news cycle, in the leadup to the election, they remain in high demand.PRIZEWINNING: A winner of the National Book Award for their previous book, The Future is History, Gessen is the recipient of numerous additional accolades, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, a Nieman Fellowship, the Hitchens Prize, and the Overseas Press Club Award for Best Commentary.