Description

Based on the History Of Ideas podcast series by Talking Politics host David Runciman, A History of Ideas explores some of the most important thinkers and prominent ideas lying behind modern politics – from Hobbes to Gandhi, from democracy to patriarchy, and from revolution to lock down.

While explaining the most important and often-cited ideas of thinkers such as Constant, De Tocqueville, Marx and Engels, Hayek, MacKinnon and Fukuyama, David Runciman shows how crises – revolutions, wars, depressions, pandemics – generated these new ways of political thinking. This is a history of ideas to help make sense of what’s happening today.

Publisher Review

Praise for How Democracy Ends: Presented in pellucid prose free of the jargon of academic political science, How Democracy Ends is a strikingly readable and richly learned contribution to understanding the world today ... surely one of the most luminously intelligent books on politics to have been published for many years. -- John Gray * New Statesman * Bracingly intelligent ... a wonderful read -- Mark Mazower * Guardian * Full of intriguing new lines of thought -- Gideon Rachman * FT * Clear-headed, compact and timely * Irish Times * Refreshingly free of received and rehearsed wisdoms, Runciman doesn't tiptoe around sacred cows and invites us to take part in that most adult way of thinking: to examine contradictory ideas in tandem and ponder what the dissonance amounts to. . . . [H]e argues lucidly, persuasively, even exhilaratingly at times. The nightly news will never appear exactly the same again * Australian * Refreshingly, rather than a knicker-twisting diatribe about Trump and Brexit, Runciman offers a thoughtful analysis about what popular democracy means, and its alternatives -- Katrina Gulliver * Spectator *