Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age
Wide-ranging ... An ambitious book ... As a series of capsule histories of 21st-century right-wing movements, the book is serviceable ... He generally writes in a lucid, ambling style that is engaging enough page by page ... Kendi has long had a tendency to distill big ideas into simple categories ... Sometimes sacrifices clarity for the sake of metaphor and clunky wordplay ... A book that is simultaneously too pessimistic, about the inexorable appeal of right-wing rhetoric, and too naïve, about the effort required to beat them back.
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Meticulously researched ... An ambitious book that covers a lot of ground, intellectual and geographical ... Because of its vast remit, it is inevitable that aspects of the book feel shallow ... While Kendi does discuss the troll farms and social networks that have helped the chain of ideas encircle the globe, there could have been a deeper interrogation of technology’s role in all this ... Ultimately, though, Kendi has produced a worthwhile and accessible book that not only helps us to interpret current events but also offers a modicum of hope.
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While much of what Kendi observes has been said before, his gift for connecting the dots and pointing out common tactics and talking points in disparate places is eye-opening and sobering.
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