of the right-wing populist parties came to believe in "medium-sized lies", conspiracy theories, and alternate realities. The harsh rhetoric of right-wing populists draws international attention to the rhetoric and away from authoritarian actions and political corruption. According to Applebaum, "soft dictatorships" have been established in Poland by Law and Justice and in Hungary by Fidesz and Viktor Orbán. Reception In The New York Times, journalist Bill Keller wrote that the book continues the discussion of the fate of democracy carried out in the books The Death of Democracy by Benjamin Carter Hett, about how the political failings in Weimar Germany contributed to the rise of Nazism, How Democracies Die, a political science book by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt discussing what went wrong in various recently failed democracies, and Surviving Autocracy, by Russian journalist Masha Gessen on Trumpism. Comparing the book with Applebaum's earlier substantial works, Keller describes it as "a magazine essay expanded into a book that is part rumination, part memoir". In The Guardian, John Kampfner called the book an "engrossing" political book that is "intensely personal, and the more powerful for it". Hungarian historian Ferenc Laczó labeled Applebaum "a Dreyfusard from the right" and states that her book lacks self-examination and "curiously fails to address in what ways the political successes and policy failures of Applebaum’s own Thatcherite camp might have enabled the rise of the new rightist political forces". He nevertheless considers the book "urgent" and an "essential read". In The American Scholar, Charles Trueheart described the book as a "bleak account of the West's slide toward tyranny". Notes References External links Presentation by Applebaum on Twilight of Democracy, July 21, 2020, C-SPAN NPR Morning Edition interview with Applebaum, July 22, 2020 2020 non-fiction books Books about democracy Books about authoritarianism Books by Anne Applebaum Doubleday (publisher) books