The book, which began with one post on Facebook, the post of a scientist who reacted to Trump’s victory in the previous US election. This scientist is Timothy Snyder. You could hear about him thanks to his works on Ukraine.

“If none of us is ready to die for freedom, we will all die under tyranny.”

For Snyder, the way out of the situation is to turn to history, which, according to him, is not repeated, but still teaches. Here comes to the aid not only the experience of ancient Greece and Rome, but also the closest examples – Nazi Germany and the totalitarian Soviet Union. But no matter how valuable the historical experience, it is still a memory, the main thing, according to Snyder, is action – tyranny must be resisted and there is no other way to defeat it.

Timothy Snyder tried to summarize the experience of confronting tyranny, formulating 20 rules. They contain not only a recipe and an answer to the question “what to do”, but also to a more subtle question – “how to understand that we are dealing with tyranny.” Take, for example, paragraph 17, which reads: “Be careful when you hear dangerous words.” It is worth noting a few more rules of Snyder, which he derived for many years researching totalitarian regimes: “Do not rush to obey.” “Beware of the one-party state”, “Protect your privacy”, “Be brave as much as you can”.

The only drawback of this book is numerous overexaggerations encouraging needless fears.

Though the general impression is really great. My rating is 9/10.