This week, two views from other parts of the world.

First up, how do authoritarian leaders take hold and perpetuate their rule?

And Applebaum will be here to discuss her latest book, Twilight of Democracy.

Where is the world capital of self-immulations?

Barbara Demick will join us to talk about her book, Eat the Buddha, Life and Death in a Tibetan Town.

Alexander Alter will give us an update from the publishing world.

Plus Tina Jordan, John Williams and I will talk about what we and the wider world are reading.

This is the Book Review Podcast from the New York Times.

It's July 31st. I'm Pamela Paul.

And Applebaum joins us now from London.

She is the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning Gulag History and her new book is called,

Twilight of Democracy, the seductive lore of authoritarianism.

And thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me.

I want to start with a very basic language question because people are throwing around a lot of terms these days.

Authoritarianism, dictatorship, demagoguery, autocracy, fascism, and sort of get to an understanding of what we exactly mean and what you mean here by authoritarianism.

My book is about democracies, really, and it's about people and political movements in democracies who become dissatisfied with their own political systems and seek to change them radically.

And I agree with you that it's hard to sometimes describe what it is that they want to go towards, whether it's a one party state or a illiberal democracy or a, you know, not necessarily dictatorship, but a system in which there's less openness and less competition.

And so, you know, my book is about that.

It's about the, you know, the disappointment that some people feel with democracy and the draw towards more authoritarianism, more centralized, less competitive, less open political.

You're not so much concerned in this book with the specifics of the autocrats of our time, the aeratomons and potens and orbons so much as you are with the people who vote for them side with them, enable them.

Why did you decide to look at it from that angle?

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