Theology in the Democracy of the Dead

Download Theology in the Democracy of the Dead PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Baker Academic
ISBN 13 : 1493419641
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (934 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Theology in the Democracy of the Dead by : Matt Jenson

Download or read book Theology in the Democracy of the Dead written by Matt Jenson and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: G. K. Chesterton wrote, "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead." This book pays homage to major theologians of the Christian tradition that tell the history of theology. Matt Jenson engages in charitable yet critical exposition and dialogue with eleven select thinkers, offering a lucid, synthetic account of their theology with a view to ongoing systematic theological issues. He engages directly with core primary texts and treats individual theologians in greater depth and nuance than most overview textbooks.

The Death of Democracy

Download The Death of Democracy PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Henry Holt and Company
ISBN 13 : 1250162513
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (51 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Death of Democracy by : Benjamin Carter Hett

Download or read book The Death of Democracy written by Benjamin Carter Hett and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting account of how the Nazi Party came to power and how the failures of the Weimar Republic and the shortsightedness of German politicians allowed it to happen. Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In The Death of Democracy, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time. To say that Hitler was elected is too simple. He would never have come to power if Germany’s leading politicians had not responded to a spate of populist insurgencies by trying to co-opt him, a strategy that backed them into a corner from which the only way out was to bring the Nazis in. Hett lays bare the misguided confidence of conservative politicians who believed that Hitler and his followers would willingly support them, not recognizing that their efforts to use the Nazis actually played into Hitler’s hands. They had willingly given him the tools to turn Germany into a vicious dictatorship. Benjamin Carter Hett is a leading scholar of twentieth-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of these feckless politicians show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it. He offers a powerful lesson for today, when democracy once again finds itself embattled and the siren song of strongmen sounds ever louder.

The Life and Death of Democracy

Download The Life and Death of Democracy PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1847377602
Total Pages : 717 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (473 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Life and Death of Democracy by : John Keane

Download or read book The Life and Death of Democracy written by John Keane and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 717 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Keane's The Life and Death of Democracy will inspire and shock its readers. Presenting the first grand history of democracy for well over a century, it poses along the way some tough and timely questions: can we really be sure that democracy had its origins in ancient Greece? How did democratic ideals and institutions come to have the shape they do today? Given all the recent fanfare about democracy promotion, why are many people now gripped by the feeling that a bad moon is rising over all the world's democracies? Do they indeed have a future? Or is perhaps democracy fated to melt away, along with our polar ice caps? The work of one of Britain's leading political writers, this is no mere antiquarian history. Stylishly written, this superb book confronts its readers with an entirely fresh and irreverent look at the past, present and future of democracy. It unearths the beginnings of such precious institutions and ideals as government by public assembly, votes for women, the secret ballot, trial by jury and press freedom. It tracks the changing, hotly disputed meanings of democracy and describes quite a few of the extraordinary characters, many of them long forgotten, who dedicated their lives to building or defending democracy. And it explains why democracy is still potentially the best form of government on earth -- and why democracies everywhere are sleepwalking their way into deep trouble.

Democracy and the Death of Shame

Download Democracy and the Death of Shame PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107063191
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (7 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Democracy and the Death of Shame by : Jill Locke

Download or read book Democracy and the Death of Shame written by Jill Locke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-04 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is shame dead? With personal information made so widely available, an eroding public/private distinction, and a therapeutic turn in public discourse, many seem to think so. People across the political spectrum have criticized these developments and sought to resurrect shame in order to protect privacy and invigorate democratic politics. Democracy and the Death of Shame reads the fear that 'shame is dead' as an expression of anxiety about the social disturbance endemic to democratic politics. Far from an essential supplement to democracy, the recurring call to 'bring back shame' and other civilizing mores is a disciplinary reaction to the work of democratic citizens who extend the meaning of political equality into social realms. Rereadings from the ancient Cynics to the mid-twentieth century challenge the view that shame is dead and show how shame, as a politically charged idea, is disavowed, invoked, and negotiated in moments of democratic struggle.

How Democracies Die

Download How Democracies Die PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 1524762946
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (247 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis How Democracies Die by : Steven Levitsky

Download or read book How Democracies Die written by Steven Levitsky and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Comprehensive, enlightening, and terrifyingly timely.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITH BOOK PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Time • Foreign Affairs • WBUR • Paste Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one. Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved. Praise for How Democracies Die “What we desperately need is a sober, dispassionate look at the current state of affairs. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, two of the most respected scholars in the field of democracy studies, offer just that.”—The Washington Post “Where Levitsky and Ziblatt make their mark is in weaving together political science and historical analysis of both domestic and international democratic crises; in doing so, they expand the conversation beyond Trump and before him, to other countries and to the deep structure of American democracy and politics.”—Ezra Klein, Vox “If you only read one book for the rest of the year, read How Democracies Die. . . .This is not a book for just Democrats or Republicans. It is a book for all Americans. It is nonpartisan. It is fact based. It is deeply rooted in history. . . . The best commentary on our politics, no contest.”—Michael Morrell, former Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (via Twitter) “A smart and deeply informed book about the ways in which democracy is being undermined in dozens of countries around the world, and in ways that are perfectly legal.”—Fareed Zakaria, CNN

The Death of Social Democracy

Download The Death of Social Democracy PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317036379
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Death of Social Democracy by : Ashley Lavelle

Download or read book The Death of Social Democracy written by Ashley Lavelle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whereas many writers and scholars interested in the field of social democracy have focused on factors such as the role of economic globalization and electoral pressures, Ashley Lavelle explores the importance of the collapse of the post-war economic boom and lower growth rates since then. He examines how these pressures have led social democrats to embrace neo-liberal policies and become threatened by minor parties and independent politicians. Providing an original argument about the decline of social democracy, the author investigates how its decline has increased the popularity of minor parties and independents, along with the reasons for social democratic membership and electoral decline. This is an important book for scholars of social democracy and the broader themes of world politics, political parties, social movements and globalization.

Orthodoxy

Download Orthodoxy PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : United Holdings Group
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.A/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Orthodoxy by : Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Download or read book Orthodoxy written by Gilbert Keith Chesterton and published by United Holdings Group. This book was released on 1908 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Democracy of the Dead

Download The Democracy of the Dead PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Open Court
ISBN 13 : 0812699386
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (126 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Democracy of the Dead by : Roger T. Ames

Download or read book The Democracy of the Dead written by Roger T. Ames and published by Open Court. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Will democracy figure prominently in China's future? If so, what kind of democracy? In this insightful and thought-provoking book, David Hall and Roger Ames explore such questions and, in the course of answering them, look to the ideas of John Dewey and Confucius. Those most sanguine about the future of Chinese-Western relations presume that a modernized China will be essentially westernized as well. They believe that in order to enter the family of nations China must be transformed into a liberal democracy, complete with free enterprise capitalism and rational technologies. Only in this manner, so this argument goes, can there be hope for increased rights and freedoms for the individual Chinese. Contrary to this view, the authors argue that it is a mistake to equate modernization with westernization and to believe that individualist, rights-based democracy and its economic and technological accouterments are inevitable consequences of civilized development. Modernity, the authors claim, far from being a universal expression of the human spirit, is a peculiarly Western invention which must be adapted significantly if it is to be useful in a Chinese environment. In The Democracy of the Dead, Hall and Ames argue for the viability of the traditional Chinese cultural sensibility and claim that the China which may well come to dominate the global culture of the twenty-first century will not be a society of increasingly rugged individuals, nor will it be the Netscaped, McDonaldized Theme Park of which Western entrepreneurs have begun to dream. Rather, China is likely to maintain far more of its traditional character than most now suspect possible, and will, therefore, enter the modernworld largely on its own terms. Hall and Ames argue that accommodating the legitimate desires of the Chinese people will require the promotion of a communitarian form of democracy seriously at odds with the liberal democratic model which dominates Western democracies. This will best be accomplished by appealing to the communitarian strain of thought within our own tradition. To this end the authors offer John Dewey's theory of democracy, that of the "communicating community", as the vision which is best suited to engage the realities of Chinese social practice and to promote the realization of a Confucian democracy in China.

Rescuing Democracy

Download Rescuing Democracy PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : punctum books
ISBN 13 : 0998237507
Total Pages : 520 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (982 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Rescuing Democracy by : Paul E. Smith

Download or read book Rescuing Democracy written by Paul E. Smith and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2016 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book proposes a new institution - the 'People's Forum' - to enable democratic governments to effectively address long-running issues like global warming and inequality. It would help citizens decide what strategic problems their government must fix, especially where this requires them to suffer some inconvenience or cost.The People's Forum is first based on a new diagnosis of government failure in democracies. The book tests its own analyses of government failure by seeing whether these might help us to explain the failures of particular democracies to address (and in some cases, to even recognize) several crucial environmental problems. The essential features of a new design for democracy are described and then compared with those of previous institutional designs that were also intended to improve the quality of democratic government. In that comparison, the People's Forum turns out to be not only the most effective design for developing and implementing competent policy, but also the easiest to establish and run. The latter advantage is crucial as there has been no success in getting previous designs into actual trial practice. It is hoped that this book may inspire a small group to raise the money to set up and run the People's Forum. Then, as citizens see it operating and engage with it, they may come to regard the new Forum as essential in helping them to deliberate long-running issues and to get their resulting initiatives implemented by government. Smith also discusses how the People's Forum must be managed and how groups with different political ideologies may react to it.An Afterword sets out the method by which this design was produced, to help those who might want to devise an institution themselves. The new concepts in environmental science that the book develops to test its diagnosis are applied in an Appendix to outline crucial options for the future of Tasmania. Similar options apply to many countries, states and provinces. As indicated above, those choices are currently beyond the capacity of democratic governments to address and in some cases, even to recognize. But the People's Forum may lift them out of that morass.

Lord Cornwallis Is Dead

Download Lord Cornwallis Is Dead PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674989155
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Lord Cornwallis Is Dead by : Nico Slate

Download or read book Lord Cornwallis Is Dead written by Nico Slate and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-11 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do democracies bring about greater equality among their citizens? India embraced universal suffrage in 1947 and yet its citizens are far from realizing equality. The U.S. struggles with intolerance and inequality well into the twenty-first century. Nico Slate offers a new look at the struggle for freedom that linked two former British colonies.

This Republic of Suffering

Download This Republic of Suffering PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0375703837
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (757 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis This Republic of Suffering by : Drew Gilpin Faust

Download or read book This Republic of Suffering written by Drew Gilpin Faust and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An "extraordinary ... profoundly moving" history (The New York Times Book Review) of the American Civil War that reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. An estiated 750,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be seven and a half million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust describes how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, nurses, northerners and southerners come together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War's most fundamental and widely shared reality. With a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Emerging Democratic Majority

Download The Emerging Democratic Majority PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0743254783
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (432 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Emerging Democratic Majority by : John B. Judis

Download or read book The Emerging Democratic Majority written by John B. Judis and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004-02-10 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR AND A WINNER OF THE WASHINGTON MONTHLY'S ANNUAL POLITICAL BOOK AWARD Political experts John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira convincingly use hard data -- demographic, geographic, economic, and political -- to forecast the dawn of a new progressive era. In the 1960s, Kevin Phillips, battling conventional wisdom, correctly foretold the dawn of a new conservative era. His book, The Emerging Republican Majority, became an indispensable guide for all those attempting to understand political change through the 1970s and 1980s. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, with the country in Republican hands, The Emerging Democratic Majority is the indispensable guide to this era. In five well-researched chapters and a new afterword covering the 2002 elections, Judis and Teixeira show how the most dynamic and fastest-growing areas of the country are cultivating a new wave of Democratic voters who embrace what the authors call "progressive centrism" and take umbrage at Republican demands to privatize social security, ban abortion, and cut back environmental regulations. As the GOP continues to be dominated by neoconservatives, the religious right, and corporate influence, this is an essential volume for all those discontented with their narrow agenda -- and a clarion call for a new political order.

How Democracy Ends

Download How Democracy Ends PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Profile Books
ISBN 13 : 1782834125
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (828 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis How Democracy Ends by : David Runciman

Download or read book How Democracy Ends written by David Runciman and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2018-05-10 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Scintillating ... thought-provoking ... one of the very best of the great crop of recent books on the subject.' Andrew Rawnsley, Observer Democracy has died hundreds of times, all over the world. We think we know what that looks like: chaos descends and the military arrives to restore order, until the people can be trusted to look after their own affairs again. However, there is a danger that this picture is out of date. Until very recently, most citizens of Western democracies would have imagined that the end was a long way off, and very few would have thought it might be happening before their eyes as Trump, Brexit and paranoid populism have become a reality. David Runciman, one of the UK's leading professors of politics, answers all this and more as he surveys the political landscape of the West, helping us to spot the new signs of a collapsing democracy and advising us on what could come next.

The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government

Download The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393242110
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (932 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government by : Philip K. Howard

Download or read book The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government written by Philip K. Howard and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-04-14 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The secret to good government is a question no one in Washington is asking: “What’s the right thing to do?” What’s wrong in Washington is deeper than you think. Yes, there’s gridlock, polarization, and self-dealing. But hidden underneath is something bigger and more destructive. It’s a broken governing system. From that comes wasteful government, rising debt, failing schools, expensive health care, and economic hardship. Rules have replaced leadership in America. Bureaucracy, regulation, and outmoded law tie our hands and confine policy choices. Nobody asks, “What’s the right thing to do here?” Instead, they wonder, “What does the rule book say?” There’s a fatal flaw in America’s governing system—trying to decree correctness through rigid laws will never work. Public paralysis is the inevitable result of the steady accretion of detailed rules. America is now run by dead people—by political leaders from the past who enacted mandatory programs that churn ahead regardless of waste, irrelevance, or new priorities. America needs to radically simplify its operating system and give people—officials and citizens alike—the freedom to be practical. Rules can’t accomplish our goals. Only humans can get things done. In The Rule of Nobody Philip K. Howard argues for a return to the framers’ vision of public law—setting goals and boundaries, not dictating daily choices. This incendiary book explains how America went wrong and offers a guide for how to liberate human ingenuity to meet the challenges of this century.

Democracy and Education

Download Democracy and Education PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 456 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Democracy and Education by : John Dewey

Download or read book Democracy and Education written by John Dewey and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 1916 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: . Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.

The Death of Politics

Download The Death of Politics PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0062820818
Total Pages : 255 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (628 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Death of Politics by : Peter Wehner

Download or read book The Death of Politics written by Peter Wehner and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times opinion writer, media commentator, outspoken Republican and Christian critic of the Trump presidency offers a spirited defense of politics and its virtuous and critical role in maintaining our democracy and what we must do to save it before it is too late. “Any nation that elects Donald Trump to be its president has a remarkably low view of politics.” Frustrated and feeling betrayed, Americans have come to loathe politics with disastrous results, argues Peter Wehner. In this timely manifesto, the veteran of three Republican administrations and man of faith offers a reasoned and persuasive argument for restoring “politics” as a worthy calling to a cynical and disillusioned generation of Americans. Wehner has long been one of the leading conservative critics of Donald Trump and his effect on the Republican Party. In this impassioned book, he makes clear that unless we overcome the despair that has caused citizens to abandon hope in the primary means for improving our world—the political process—we will not only fall victim to despots but hasten the decline of what has truly made America great. Drawing on history and experience, he reminds us of the hard lessons we have learned about how we rule ourselves—why we have checks and balances, why no one is above the law, why we defend the rights of even those we disagree with. Wehner believes we can turn the country around, but only if we abandon our hatred and learn to appreciate and honor the unique and noble American tradition of doing “politics.” If we want the great American experiment to continue and to once again prosper, we must once more take up the responsibility each and every one of us as citizens share.

Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone

Download Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Metropolitan Books
ISBN 13 : 1250179858
Total Pages : 219 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (51 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone by : Astra Taylor

Download or read book Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone written by Astra Taylor and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is democracy really? What do we mean when we use the term? And can it ever truly exist?Astra Taylor, hailed as a “New Civil Rights Leader” by the Los Angeles Times, provides surprising answers. There is no shortage of democracy, at least in name, and yet it is in crisis everywhere we look. From a cabal of plutocrats in the White House to gerrymandering and dark-money compaign contributions, it is clear that the principle of government by and for the people is not living up to its promise. The problems lie deeper than any one election cycle. As Astra Taylor demonstrates, real democracy—fully inclusive and completely egalitarian—has in fact never existed. In a tone that is both philosophical and anecdotal, weaving together history, theory, the stories of individuals, and interviews with such leading thinkers as Cornel West and Wendy Brown, Taylor invites us to reexamine the term. Is democracy a means or an end, a process or a set of desired outcomes? What if those outcomes, whatever they may be—peace, prosperity, equality, liberty, an engaged citizenry—can be achieved by non-democratic means? In what areas of life should democratic principles apply? If democracy means rule by the people, what does it mean to rule and who counts as the people? Democracy's inherent paradoxes often go unnamed and unrecognized. Exploring such questions, Democracy May Not Exist offers a better understanding of what is possible, what we want, why democracy is so hard to realize, and why it is worth striving for.