The world after the fall6/13/2023 ![]() ![]() The currents of history are sweeping us all in the wrong direction – toward autocracy, toward technological dystopia, toward collapse – as a direct consequence of the past three decades of American hegemony, but it's not yet too late to reverse course. After the fall, we must determine what it means to be American again."Īt the core of this complex, ambitious book is a simple truth: we are living at a historical inflection point. "America has an opportunity to step back into history as a nation with a new understanding of how to improve upon the world we made. At the same time, he learns from a diverse set of characters - from Obama to rebels to a rising generation of leaders - how looking squarely at where America has gone wrong only makes it more essential to fight for what America is supposed to be at home - for our own country, and the entire world. ![]() Throughout, Rhodes comes to realize how much America’s fingerprints are on a world we helped to shape: through the excesses of our post-Cold War embrace of unbridled capitalism, post-9/11 nationalism and militarism, mania for technology and social media, and the racism that shaped the backlash to the Obama presidency. Along the way, a Russian opposition leader he spends time with is poisoned, the Hong Kong protesters he comes to know see their movement snuffed out, and America itself reaches the precipice of losing democracy before giving itself a second chance.Įqual parts memoir and reporting, After the Fall is a hugely ambitious and essential work of discovery. Over the next three years, he traveled to dozens of countries, meeting with politicians, activists, and dissidents confronting the same nationalism and authoritarianism that was tearing America apart. To understand what was happening in America, Rhodes decided to look outward. In 2017, as Ben Rhodes was helping Barack Obama begin his next chapter, the legacy they worked to build for eight years was being taken apart. Why is democracy so threatened in America and around the world? And what can we do about it? A former White House aide and close confidante to President Barack Obama - and New York Times bestselling author of The World as It Is - travels the globe in a deeply personal, beautifully observed quest for answers.
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