Timothy Snyder, author of the New York Times and Washington Post bestseller On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, will be in his home state of Ohio for a book tour May 10-13.
Snyder, the son of Christine and Gene Snyder of Wilmington, will be at Books and Company at The Greene in Beavercreek at 3 p.m. Saturday, May 13, and at the Cincinnati-Hamilton County Public Library at 7 p.m. that evening.
The Housum Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Austria, Snyder is a leading American scholar whose body of work has raised him to prominence in Europe for his academic contributions to the history of that part of the world.
With the publication of On Tyranny, which grew out of a viral Facebook post by the author, following the 2016 presidential election, Snyder’s public profile has surged in his own country. At 126 pages and handbook-sized, On Tyranny succinctly describes signs of authoritarian threat and offers specific ways citizens can protect modern, western democracy, as well as themselves.
Snyder writes, “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.”
In addition to On Tyranny, Snyder has single-authored six books, including his 2015 bestseller, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, which was published in twenty-four foreign editions and received numerous distinctions, including the award of the Dutch Auschwitz Committee.
He is also a regular contributor to academic journals and leading magazines and newspapers, both here and abroad. He speaks five European languages and reads ten.
Other stops on Snyder’s Ohio tour include The Book Loft in Columbus at 6 p.m. May 10; the Beachwood Branch of the Cuyahoga Public Library at 7 p.m. May 11; and the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library at 3 p.m., May 12.
More information about the author, his work, links to articles and interviews, and a schedule of his lectures and events are available at www.timothysnyder.org.
