Timothy D. Snyder

This is half memoir, half polemic and the two don't meld together at all, rather the biographical portions become tortured analogies for systemic political and social problems in ways they absolutely don't stand up to. For example, Snyder returns over and over to an anecdote about a hospitalization where he, a white person, is being neglected, and a black friend is standing up for him to doctors. Not being taken seriously in this is apparently a great symbol of racism in society. Exactly how show more isn't explained, it's apparently obvious, except to anyone else who's been near healthcare having symptoms overlooked, or having standoffs with bystanders isn't uncommon, and that their concerns should trump a medical evaluation is only rarely the case. In addition this person had medical qualifications they refused to disclose, according to Snyder's own story. What an atrocious story to hang the subject of racial disparity from.

Speaking of tortured analogies, Snyder goes into an interpretation of Plato's philosophy and the allegory of the cave that is bizarre and uninformed; in his telling it's a philosophy of death that's therefore antithetical to freedom, because freedom requires a body, and life. How the theory of forms is a philosophy of death is not explained, it's apparently obvious. He also manages to make embarrassing factual errors, asking "even if they were chained so they couldn’t move their head", which is a central premise of the whole allegory.

In further kill-your-darlings territory, Snyder peppers the text with references to lieb and körper which seems to be his central thesis throughout the book, but the way the differences are supposed to be highlighted is arbitrarily scattered in by further bad examples and shoehorned biographical notes. At times it's like a soapbox speaker ranting about current events who intermittently smatters in the word "freedom" as if it cements opinion as fact. Rock, flag and eagle.

Given how excellent Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin and Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning were, it's shocking to see this type of half baked and unsourced writing with mistakes that could have been fixed in a cursory fact check. It's so bad it's making me think twice about using his other books as reference works. I'm sure there are other bad reviews that just disagree with his politics, but in this case I mostly agree on the politics, I disagree with the hack writing. show less

Snyder is a respected historian and lays out warnings: post-truth is pre-fascism. But also provides information on how to resist: don't quietly go along with what you think the regime wants before it even asks. Also, be weird because authoritarianism requires conformity and if you are weird, if you don't conform, you are less likely to begin believing the lies of the regime, but also resist it.

The book is both practical and terrifying and should absolutely be read by everyone in the United show more States who cares about democracy and the current political crisis in this country. show less

This book makes the case that many or most of the declines in openness and freedom over the last three decades in Western Europe and in the United States can be traced by a consistent effort by Vladimir Putin's Russia to spread strife to other nations which are seen as perpetual enemies. The author goes back to the first half of the twentieth century where a man I'd never heard of before, Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin, put together the right-wing counterpart of the Russian Communist philosophies. show more Ilyin died in the 1950s but was brought back in the 1990s as someone who explained the misfortunes experienced by that country as a kind of contagion by the decadent and evil west which was determined to frustrate the realization of a united Eurasian empire inspired by the kingdom of Kievan Rus in the early Middle Ages centered. The rise of the class of oligarchs found themes in this philosophy which suited the kinds of things they were doing to enhance their personal wealth, much of it revolving around a narrative of endless struggle with outside nations which parallels the class struggle emphasized by the left.

The author then focuses on the years between 2010 and 2016 when Putin had consolidated his power as lifetime ruler and has gathered other oligarchical families in Russia and outside. The invasion of Ukraine is part military operation, part cyberwar, and a good deal psyops to the population of Russia. The presentation is not scholarly and there are no guides to primary sources here, so the careful reader would have to do a good deal of fact-checking on their own to verify the dozens or hundreds of incidents covered. There are a few names which recur over and over as fellow travelers with fascistic tendencies hoping to emulate the successes in their own governments. Towards the end of this section come the more or less direct attacks against the political systems of Poland, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. I got the impression that they must have been pleased with the amount of success they have had beyond their wildest dreams in foisting a kleptocratic structure modeled on the Russian oligarchy on America as punishment for our attempts to meddle in their affairs over the past century.

It is a horror story for a person who believes in the old myths about liberal democracy and about its inevitable spread among all nations. It made me angry and outraged that this whole scheme played out so perfectly to Putin's advantage and still somehow left him as something other than an utter pariah in public opinion. Of course the other world leaders do not have the freedom to shun such a dangerous character, and of course there are thousands of Ukrainians who know how the actions on the ground and the embrace of alternative facts came so close to dismembering their entire country, and yet it doesn't seem like there's an enormous reservoir of loathing among Western European and North American citizens at what he has orchestrated over all this time. There have been dangerous strongmen in the past which weren't greeted with a collective shrug. There have been sanctions, but beyond that, it seems like there has been no way to register the kind of revulsion these kinds of authoritarian moves cause in people who still believe in Enlightenment ideals.

I listened to the audiobook version of this and found it maybe even more gripping than it would have been in print. This is a case where the voice of the author add something to the experience of the work; it makes it easier to hear the alarm bells he's ringing, in my opinion. I found it an absorbing work that scared me out of my wits that I would recommend to anyone who would want to be shaken in the same way. show less

This impassioned, accurate and timely critique of the American healthcare system by the famed Yale historian originated from a diary he wrote while hospitalized from December 2019 to March 2020 after a series of medical misdiagnoses nearly claimed his life.

On December 3, 2019, Dr Snyder gave a lecture in Munich, but later that evening he fell ill, so he sought medical attention. The German doctors could not find anything wrong with him, and he was cleared to return home to the United States. show more Shortly after his return he fell ill again, and while at Yale-New Haven Hospital in mid December he was diagnosed with and treated for a burst appendix. (My best guess is that the German doctors missed the burst appendix because the relief of the ruptured organ caused relief of the typical reproducible pain expected in a classic case of acute appendicitis, and Dr Snyder flew back to the US before the symptoms of a burst appendix, including peritonitis, began.) Unfortunately the surgeon(s) failed to recognize that he also had a large abscess in his liver, which was followed by a case of near fatal bacterial sepsis that was nearly missed by nurses and physicians working in the Yale-New Haven Hospital Emergency Department on a very busy Saturday night in late December (note: a blood pressure of 70/30 is not normal for anyone!!). Eventually after multiple surgeries and procedures, along with a huge hospital bill, he was sent home in March, shortly after COVID-19 was declared as a pandemic.

Dr Snyder documented his experiences during those three months as a patient and his thoughts about why the healthcare system fails so many people, both patients and healthcare providers, due to the takeover of the system by corporate medicine and other monied interests, which stand to gain when people are sick and need expensive medications and procedures, rather than providing them with preventive care that keeps them healthy. He mentions that the Declaration of Independence lists as three unalienable rights “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” yet chronic illness and pain prevent many Americans from being happy, or truly free.

The first lesson of “Our Malady” is ‘Health Care is a Human Right,’ and in it he mentions that this right, which was declared by the United States after World War II and adopted by numerous countries, including Germany and Japan, was not fully embraced here, and that far too many Americans suffer in a system that costs all of us more but provide us with less care, save for the widespread distribution of opioid pills that enrich companies such as Purdue Pharma but only shorten and decrease the quality of life for many rural and working class Americans.

In lesson 2, ‘Renewal begins with children,’ Dr Snyder notes the stark differences in the medical care he and his wife received when their daughter was born in Vienna with the experience with their son in the United States, and how American parents leave the hospital far less equipped to care for a young newborn. He argues that an excellent early start in life provides young children and their parents with a greater chance of success and normalcy, which we in the United States are often not providing to families.

‘The truth will set us free’ is a sharp rebuke of the deplorable management of the COVID-19 pandemic by the Trump administration, which was worse than in any other countries, as over one million Americans died. Reading this lesson brought back memories of the fear and difficulties first responders such as myself faced, as Trump sent millions of precious and lifesaving N95 masks to China and those of us caring for patients hospitalized with COVID-19 often had to use the same mask and protective gown for a week at a time, labeled with our names. Any complaints about not having sufficient protection, even by my partners with families, was quickly squashed by hospital administrators (none of whom, of course, were involved in direct patient care) until we were finally provided with enough masks, gowns and other personal protective equipment (PPE) months after the pandemic was declared in March 2020.

The final lesson, ‘Doctors should be in charge,’ successfully argues that doctors have very little ability to adequately care for patients in corporate medicine settings where even non-profit hospitals focus on the bottom line and money generating activities such as robotic surgeries as opposed to mental health care that would benefit many more children, or clinics in low income or underserved communities. Insurance companies, drug companies and specialists all benefit from the status quo, and primary care physicians and, more importantly, the patients they serve suffer as a result.

I can identify with Our Malady on many levels: first as a patient who sought emergency care for severe abdominal pain, was quickly and accurately diagnosed with acute appendicitis, was operated on within 24 hours, and was discharged home appropriately the following day; as a patient who was hospitalized in the same facility twice for an abnormal heart rhythm, and treated with respect and attention by the nurses and physicians who cared for me; as a physician first responder during the COVID-19 pandemic, who witnessed the often inadequate and misleading information that came from the federal government, particularly the Trump administration; and as a physician who is well aware of the deep seated problems in the American healthcare system and agrees with Dr Snyder's criticisms of it and his suggestions to make it better for everyone, both patients and healthcare providers. This is a fantastic book that I can't recommend more highly. show less