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In his 2024 book Age of Revolutions, best-selling nonfiction author, CNN host, and public intellectual Fareed Zakaria seeks to describe a recurring pattern in history: a social revolution arises, it improves people’s lives, but then a backlash sets in
. This pattern is reflected in the book’s subtitle: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present. In Part I, Zakaria considers revolutions of the past, starting with the establishing of the first classically liberal state in the Netherlands. Part II surveys revolutions of the present, in four areas: global economics, technology, social identity, and geopolitics.Age of Revolutions was published in the months leading up to the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, a contest whose loudest themes echo throughout the book. In part, the book represents Zakaria’s efforts to put the current day stuggles between advocates of “classical liberalism” and “illiberalism” into a deep historical perspective that stretches back hundreds of years.
Explore a full book summary & analysis, a discussion of the main ideas, and explanations of important quotes in Age of Revolutions.
