Some weeks the new-books table arranges itself into an argument. This one did, and it did not need much help.
Look at what arrived: a study of why voters keep choosing demagogues, an account of the three days that ended the Soviet Union, an inside report on an American president's appetite for power, and a history of the word genocide . Then, from the open archives, an illustrated notebook that only reached English readers in complete form in 2009, a German treatise on musical beauty, and a Finnish volume nobody was waiting on. One half of that table explains how the worst things get built. The other half is proof of how slowly the good ones travel.
Kirkus's review of John Keane's Demagogues and Despots opens on the uncomfortable part: demagogues have always had a bad rap, and since the turn of this century voters around the world have elected them anyway. Keane, a professor of politics at the University of Sydney and the author of The Shortest History of Democracy , is not describing a hijacking. He is describing a choice.