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After the Fall
- Author
- Ian Shapiro
- Narrator
- Grover Gardner
- Publisher
- Hachette Audio
- Publish Date
- 5 May 2026
- Run Time
- 9 hours 51 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ushered in an era of tremendous political optimism: communism was receding and democracy was on the march in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and much of Asia. Even surviving communist regimes were adopting capitalism, and the stagflation of the 1970s and industrial strife of the 1980s were in the rearview mirror.
Four decades later, euphoria has given way to resentment and pessimism. Britain left the EU, Donald Trump’s populist crusade gained him the White House not once, but twice, and right-wing parties have gained power across Europe and other parts of the world on a scale not seen since the 1930s. What happened?
In After the Fall, pre-eminent political scientist Ian Shapiro argues that the current crisis was far from inevitable. Politicians made consistently bad choices on topics ranging from NATO’s future to the War on Terror to humanitarian intervention and the governance of their economies. In doing so, they fostered a crisis of confidence in political institutions, empowered anti-system parties and candidates, and produced a new Cold War as dangerous as the last.
By scrutinizing the roads not taken by politicians in the past, Shapiro maps out what better futures might still be possible.
Critics Review
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“Those struggling to understand how this country and the world at large could fall from the crowning heights of 1989, a moment of ascendant prosperity under democratic capitalism, to the contemporary morass, corruption, and authoritarianism of new right populism need look no farther than Ian Shapiro’s After The Fall. Shapiro skillfully documents the lost opportunities, bad choices, and failures of commission and omission as the post-Cold War edifice came under the growing strains of the economically dispossessed, political entrepreneurs skilled at mobilizing discontent and voters increasingly willing to turn to autocratic leaders.”—Thomas Edsall, columnist, New York Times
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“A compelling analysis—profoundly challenging to so many Western assumptions—with an admirable blend of realism, imagination, unflinching criticism, and generosity—effortlessly in command of geopolitics—showing how often confusion, conventional wisdoms, group-think, and lack of imagination squandered the opportunities of the 90s and accelerated the collapse of the global order.”—Rory Stewart, former Member of Parliament and author of The Places in Between
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“Ian Shapiro’s powerful and arresting book explains just how and why the politics of Europe and North America have come to be so confused, so acrimonious, and so dangerous over the last few decades. Its focus is on a small number of fateful decisions, any of which could readily have been avoided. Since the damage they have inflicted now threatens everyone and those who have lost from it so drastically outnumber those who have gained, it shows something surprising, of immense political importance and the greatest urgency.”—John Dunn, University of Cambridge
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Details
- Author
- Ian Shapiro
- Narrator
- Grover Gardner
- Duration
- 9 hours 51 minutes
- Release Date
- 5 May 2026
- ISBN
- 9781668657874
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Hachette Audio
- Genre
- Political science and theory, Political structures: democracy, General and world history, Geopolitics
Synopsis
A renowned political scientist’s searing explanation for the rightward turn of global politics since the end of the Cold War. The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ushered in an era of tremendous political optimism: communism was receding and democracy was on the march in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and much of Asia. Even surviving communist regimes were adopting capitalism, and the stagflation of the 1970s and industrial strife of the 1980s were in the rearview mirror. Four decades later, euphoria has given way to resentment and pessimism. Britain left the EU, Donald Trump’s populist crusade gained him the White House not once, but twice, and right-wing parties have gained power across Europe and other parts of the world on a scale not seen since the 1930s. What happened? In After the Fall, pre-eminent political scientist Ian Shapiro argues that the current crisis was far from inevitable. Politicians made consistently bad choices on topics ranging from NATO’s future to the War on Terror to humanitarian intervention and the governance of their economies. In doing so, they fostered a crisis of confidence in political institutions, empowered anti-system parties and candidates, and produced a new Cold War as dangerous as the last. By scrutinizing the roads not taken by politicians in the past, Shapiro maps out what better futures might still be possible.
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