The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present Hardcover - 2013

From the rear cover

"In this book, David Runciman emerges as the most original guide we have to democracy's global prospects in the twenty-first century."--Melissa Lane, Princeton University

"The Confidence Trap's engrossing analytical history illuminates democracy's deepening achievements and recurring crises during the charged past century. By incisively interpreting these moments of unsettled apprehension and by tracking patterns of coping and surviving, this rich, important book helps us understand, and perhaps even navigate, present anxieties about the capacity of democracies to grapple with the big issues of economics, geopolitics, and the environment."--Ira Katznelson, author of Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time

"If you think American democracy doesn't work these days, you have to read this well-written book."--Fareed Zakaria

"Rivetingly written for a wide audience, this is David Runciman's best and most original book to date--bold, clear, astonishingly well informed, and consistently excellent. His ecumenical curiosity is as engaging as it is disarming, pulling you into a history that is effortless to read and leaves you thinking about its insights long after you put it down."--Ian Shapiro, author of The Real World of Democratic Theory

"Imaginative and entirely original. I've not read anything remotely like it."--Alan Ryan, author of On Politics

Media reviews

Citations

• Choice, 08/01/2014, Page 0
• Library Journal, 11/01/2013, Page 107
• New York Review of Books, 03/20/2014, Page 42
• Publishers Weekly, 09/16/2013, Page 0