Compares and contrasts the systems of dictatorships, fascism, and totalitarianism; discusses their defining characteristics; and provides examples of each throughout history and around the world. Includes a glossary, a bibliography, and an index.

Hailed for her "fearless indictment of the most powerful man in Russia" (The Wall Street Journal), award-winning journalist Masha Gessen is unparalleled in her understanding of the events and forces that have wracked her native country in recent times. In The Future Is History, she follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren...

Democracy is struggling in America—by now this statement is almost cliché. But what if the country is no longer a democracy at all? In Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"?

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Democracy is struggling in America, by now this statement is almost cliche. But what if the country is no longer a democracy at all? In Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"? Wolin...

In a future where the Population Police enforce the law limiting a family to only two children, Luke has lived all his twelve years in isolation and fear on his family's farm, until another "third" convinces him that the government is wrong.

An allegory exploring the dangers of life in a strictly totalitarian society governed by Big Brother and the Thought Police. As an employee at the Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith is constantly confronted with lies invented by the government to perpetuate its own power. Smith joins a rebel group called the Brotherhood dedicated to destroying the Party and freeing everyone under its control.

In a dystopian version of our reality, the world is a totalitarian state, ruled by an anonymous but powerful authority known as the Hierarchy. When a woman goes missing after painting a simple question--'Who is the prisoner?'--on a public wall, her lover sets out to find (and hopefully save) her. His journey takes him through a dismal landscape, inhabited by people terrified of--but also resisting--their subjugation.

After escaping imprisonment by the totalitarian regime known as the New Order, siblings Wisty and Whit Allgood, who possess magical powers, establish themselves as leaders of the Resistance, a hidden community of teenagers like themselves, hunted by the state and determined to defy its ban on the arts, magic, and all other forms of creativity.

An allegory exploring the dangers of life in a strictly totalitarian society governed by Big Brother and the Thought Police. As an employee at the Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith is constantly confronted with lies invented by the government to perpetuate its own power. Smith joins a rebel group called the Brotherhood dedicated to destroying the Party and freeing everyone under its control.