#8 in Politics & society
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
- 128
- Pages
- about 2.5 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 74 weeks on the list, peaked at #2
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Our view
“On Tyranny” does one thing well: it turns Europe’s twentieth century into twenty short, usable lessons. Its strength is concision; a historian’s knowledge is pressed into advice that can be read in an evening and returned to when events call for it. At under 130 pages it is a primer and a prompt, not a full account of the period.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century is a 2017 book by Timothy Snyder, a historian of 20th-century Europe. The book was published by Tim Duggan Books in hardcover and by Penguin Random House in paperback. A graphic version, illustrated by Nora Krug, was released October 5, 2021. The book topped the New York Times bestseller list for paperback nonfiction in 2017 and remained on bestseller lists as late as 2021. As of July 2025, over 1.4 million copies of On Tyranny have been sold and the book is on its 47th printing.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.5 across 410 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 74% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Politics & society average of 8.0. That is how 8.4 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.3 | 28 | 7% |
| Hardcover | 8.5 | 382 | 93% |
Frequently asked
How long is On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century?
It has 128 pages — shorter than 88% of the ranked books in Politics & society.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Politics & society — with scores between 8.1 and 8.8, closest to this book.
