The Revenge of Power

How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century

By: Moisés Naím

Narrated by: Larry Herron

Moisés Naím’s The Revenge of Power is an urgent, thrilling, and original look at the future of democracy. It illuminates one of the most important battles of our time: the future of freedom and how to contain and defeat the autocrats mushrooming around the world.

In his New York Times best-selling book The End of Power, Moisés Naím examined power-diluting forces. In The Revenge of Power, Naím turns to the trends, conditions, and behaviors that are contributing to the concentration of power, and to the clash between those forces that weaken power and those that strengthen it. He concentrates on the three “P”s—populism, polarization, and post-truths. All of which are as old as time, but are combined by today’s autocrats to undermine democratic life in new and frightening ways. Power has not changed. But the way people go about gaining it and using it has been transformed.

The Revenge of Power connects the dots between global events and political tactics that, when taken together, show a profound and often stealthy transformation in power and politics worldwide. Using the best available data and insights taken from recent research in the social sciences, Naím reveals how, on close examination, the same set of strategies to consolidate power pop up again and again in places with vastly different political, economic, and social circumstances, and offers insights about what can be done to ensure that freedom and democracy prevail.

The outcomes of these battles for power will determine if our future will be more autocratic or more democratic. These outcomes will, in turn, depend on the capacity of our democracies to survive the attacks and dirty tricks of autocratic leaders bent on weakening the checks and balances that limit their power. Naím addresses the questions at the heart of the matter: What are, in practice, those attacks and tricks? Why is power concentrating in some places while in others it is fragmenting and degrading? And the big question: What is the future of freedom?

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press

©2022 Moises Naim (P)2022 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

Long-listed, New Yorker Best Books of the Year, 2022

"If you want to really understand the current global threat to democracy, you should read The Revenge of Power. Moises Naim has written a masterpiece."—David Rubenstein, Co-founder and Co-Executive Chairman of The Carlyle Group

"In The Revenge of Power Moises Naim, one of the most acute observers of world politics, comprehensively catalogs the threats to democracy on the part of unaccountable dictators, populists, and companies in recent years, drawing insightful parallels across disparate domains. An important and timely work."—Frank Fukuyama, Professor, Stanford University

"Another original book by an original thinker, offering a unique global perspective on populism and power."—Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer-prize winning historian and staff writer, The Atlantic

Understanding and fighting autocracy

I wish this book had an afterword covering the 2024 US presidential election (too soon to be feasible, I know), but the concepts and suggestions within are vital if the world is to pull itself out of this current spiral toward an authoritarian hell.

The narrator has a wonderful voice, but he would do better to narrate quoted material without attempting accents—his strengths lie elsewhere.

The narrator does not know the names of some politicians)))

The book is great.
The voice of the narrator was great.
But he keeps calling Berlusconi - berluscini. And he has mistaken some other names 😝

Weak Narration From a Great Voice

This book is engaging, informative and insightful. it should feature in the reading list of any citizen concerned with the extremist drift as some of our most important democracies drift toward authoritarianism. The presentation is clear and well reasoned. It was marred for me by a narrator who, while possessing a great voice, still lost impact through repeated mispronounciation of names of well known global leaders and his overly dramatic style which i found unnecessary and inappropriate for this topic. Still a must read for anyone concerned about the widening trent toward autocracy.

Superior book, horrible narrator

I give very few five stars, probably no more than one per year. The author provides all kinds of insights that the talking heads and pundants seem to be clueless about.

The narrator, on the other hand, can’t even pronounce the same word, the same way sometimes. The timing, rhythm and inflection are also frequently off. It’s better than computerized narration but the publisher could’ve done better.

This is a polemic

This book mascared as an academically based evaluation of authoritarianism. In reality, it is a left wing polemic against anyone and anything Naim doesnt like. For example, he calls any laws he does not like pseudo-laws. I regret spending money for this junk.

The author’s bias is profound.

Useful perspectives. Examples from the United States are biased. Both parties are being aggressive. Saying a President appointed an unprecedented number of judges relates to vacancies not creating new courts. This is an example of the hyperbole readers need to be wary of in this book.

Amateur narrator.

Great content let down by the performance of the narrator. His mispronunciations and misreading of the text is just unforgivable.

Good book, horrible narrator

The narrator seems to believe he is in a 9 hour TV commercial. He also constantly mispronounces names and simple non-english language words. My favorite is ‘Silvio Berluscini’.. there’s a whole chapter about him in the book, so the name is mentioned 50+ times- but the narrator just can’t get it right. Can’t make this stuff up..