Empire of Democracy: The Remaking of the West since the Cold War, 1971-2017
Simon Reid-Henry
Jun 2019 · John Murray · Narrated by Elliot Fitzpatrick
headphones
Audiobook
34 hr 34 min
Unabridged
family_home
Eligible
info
Want a free 3 hr 27 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline.
Add
About this audiobook
The first panoramic history of the Western world from the 1970s to the present day: Empire of Democracy is the story for those asking how we got to where we are.
Half a century ago, at the height of the Cold War and amidst a world economic crisis, the Western democracies were forced to undergo a profound transformation. Against what some saw as a full-scale "crisis of democracy" - with race riots, anti-Vietnam marches and a wave of worker discontent sowing crisis from one nation to the next - a new political-economic order was devised and the postwar social contract was torn up and written anew.
In this epic narrative of the events that have shaped our own times, Simon Reid-Henry shows how liberal democracy, and Western history with it, was profoundly re-imagined when the postwar Golden Age ended. As the institutions of liberal rule were reinvented, a new generation of politicians emerged: Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterrand, Kohl. The late twentieth-century heyday they oversaw carried the Western democracies triumphantly to victory in the Cold War and into the economic boom of the 1990s. But equally it led them into the fiasco of Iraq, to the high drama of the financial crisis in 2007/8, and ultimately to the anti-liberal surge of our own times.
The present crisis of liberalism enjoins us to revisit these as yet unscripted decades. The era we have all been living through is closing out, democracy is turning on its axis once again. As this panoramic history poignantly reminds us, the choices we make going forward require us first to come to terms with where we have been.
(P)2019 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
Half a century ago, at the height of the Cold War and amidst a world economic crisis, the Western democracies were forced to undergo a profound transformation. Against what some saw as a full-scale "crisis of democracy" - with race riots, anti-Vietnam marches and a wave of worker discontent sowing crisis from one nation to the next - a new political-economic order was devised and the postwar social contract was torn up and written anew.
In this epic narrative of the events that have shaped our own times, Simon Reid-Henry shows how liberal democracy, and Western history with it, was profoundly re-imagined when the postwar Golden Age ended. As the institutions of liberal rule were reinvented, a new generation of politicians emerged: Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterrand, Kohl. The late twentieth-century heyday they oversaw carried the Western democracies triumphantly to victory in the Cold War and into the economic boom of the 1990s. But equally it led them into the fiasco of Iraq, to the high drama of the financial crisis in 2007/8, and ultimately to the anti-liberal surge of our own times.
The present crisis of liberalism enjoins us to revisit these as yet unscripted decades. The era we have all been living through is closing out, democracy is turning on its axis once again. As this panoramic history poignantly reminds us, the choices we make going forward require us first to come to terms with where we have been.
(P)2019 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
The first panoramic history of the Western world from the 1970s to the present day: Empire of Democracy is the story for those asking how we got to where we are.
Half a century ago, at the height of the Cold War and amidst a world economic crisis, the Western democracies were forced to undergo a...
Discover more
About the author
Simon Reid-Henry is a writer and prize-winner scholar. Associate Professor at Queen Mary, University of London, he holds a joint position as a Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo.
Simon Reid-Henry is a writer and prize-winner scholar. Associate Professor at Queen Mary, University of London, he holds a joint position as a Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo.
Rate this audiobook
Tell us what you think.
Listening information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
