The Shortest History of Democracy

4,000 Years of Self-Government-A Retelling for Our Times

By: John Keane

Narrated by: Grant Cartwright

From The Shortest History series comes the complete history of democracy, its champions, and its detractors—from the assemblies of ancient Mesopotamia to present perils

This tumultuous global story begins with democracy's radical core idea: We can collaborate, as equals, to determine our own lives and futures. John Keane traces how this concept emerged and evolved, from the earliest "assembly democracies" to European-style electoral democracy to our present system of "monitory democracy." Today, governments answer not only to voters on Election Day, but to intense public scrutiny (monitoring) every day. Keane calls this media- and communication-driven system "the most complex and vibrant form of democracy yet"—but it is not invulnerable.

We live in an age of political and environmental crisis, when despots in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere reject the promises of power-sharing. At this urgent moment, Keane's book mounts a new defense of a precious global ideal.

©2022 John Keane (P)2022 Tantor

Too Ideological

The author too often tries to champion his own personal views without providing the reader with evidence. He starts the book by claiming democracy originated in the east, and provides evidence, but does not take into account that democracy could have originated earlier, but without surviving evidence for the lack of writing. He seems to want to connect homosexuality to democracy, when of course democracy is not inherently pro- or anti-gay. The book contains a very interesting part about spain. He tries too hard to connect the emergence of different kinds of democracy to different communication technology without adding enough evidence. Democracies collapsing in europe during ww2 is portrayed as a inside failure, when in fact many of them (Czhechia, Norway, Denmark, Benelux, France) collapsed from invasion. He falsley claims that JFK claimed to be a type of food in his "Ich bin ein berliner" speech, a misconception that will hopefully go away some day. He makes statements about the poor state of democracy in hungary, india, and turkey (even calling Erdogan a despot), but refuses to get specific. international observers have called the most recent election in Turkey "free".

The audio performance itself is top notch!

Take everything with a spoon of salt, and be sceptical if you want to listen to this audiobook. It is less like a textbook, and more like an opinion piece.