Book cover of The Light that Failed: A Reckoning

Book description

*Winner of the 2020 Lionel Gelber Prize*
FINANCIAL TIMES, ECONOMIST, PROSPECT and EVENING STANDARD BOOK OF THE YEAR PICK

A landmark book that completely transforms our understanding of the crisis of liberalism, from two pre-eminent intellectuals

Why did the West, after winning the Cold War, lose its political balance?

In…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Light that Failed as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

A profound analysis of why the apparently global triumph of Western liberalism in 1989 turned sour for millions of those who believed they were joining a new world order – but came away disappointed.

This book traces how, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the hubris of Western elites helped spawn the populist and opportunistic leaders – from Russia’s Putin, to Hungary’s Orban and Donald Trump in the US – that emerged after the 2008 global financial crisis.

That systemic failure cracked the veneer of the competence of Western capitalism (which had long masked rising inequality and flat middle-class…

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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