Based on a four-year, cross-continent journey, he explores politics from Russia and Hungary to China and Hong Kong to trace the route from the end of the Cold War-a moment of American hegemony and democratic ascendancy-to the current age of Putin, Orban, and the Chinese Communist Party, all of which he views as direct and credible challenges to an American-led world order. It is this proximity to power, especially during a historic presidency, that makes Rhodes’ second book, After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made, worth considering.Īfter the Fall centers on an author grappling with a reality-in America and across the world-that has shaken his faith in the “happy democratic endings” he and Obama once held as an ultimate goal.

Ultimately, Rhodes writes personally and powerfully about finding hope in the belief that looking squarely at where America has gone wrong can make clear how essential it is to fight for what America is supposed to be, for our own country and the entire world.Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign undoubtedly inspired a movement of young progressives across America, and few believed in the sprawling idealism more than Ben Rhodes, a young New Yorker who ultimately rose to become Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor. The characters and issues that Rhodes illuminates paint a picture that shows us where we are today-from Barack Obama to a rising generation of international leaders from the authoritarian playbook endangering democracy to the flood of disinformation enabling authoritarianism. Along the way, he discusses the growing authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin, and his aggression towards Ukraine, with the foremost opposition leader in Russia, who was subsequently poisoned and imprisoned he profiled Hong Kong protesters who saw their movement snuffed out by China under Xi Jinping and America itself reached the precipice of losing democracy before giving itself a fragile second chance. He visited dozens of countries, meeting with politicians and activists confronting the same nationalism and authoritarianism that are tearing America apart. “Vital reading for Americans and people anywhere who seek to understand what is happening ‘after the fall’ of the global system created by the United States” ( New York Journal of Books ), from the former White House aide, close confidant to President Barack Obama, and author of The World as It Is At a time when democracy in the United States is endangered as never before, Ben Rhodes spent years traveling the world to understand why.

After the fall ben rhodes