A primer on political theory from bestselling author and host of Talking Politics David Runciman

'Bracingly intelligent ... a wonderful read' Guardian 'Incredibly timely ... presented [with] wonderful elegance and clarity' Irish Times Based on the History Of Ideas podcast series by Talking Politics host David Runciman, Confronting Leviathan explores some of the most important thinkers and prominent ideas lying behind modern politics - from Hobbes to Gandhi, from democracy to patriarchy, and from revolution to lock down. While explaining the most important and often-cited ideas of thinkers such as Constant, De Tocqueville, Marx and Engels, Hayek, MacKinnon and Fukuyama, David Runciman shows how crises - revolutions, wars, depressions, pandemics - generated these new ways of political thinking. This is a history of ideas to help make sense of what's happening today.

"Bracingly intelligent ... a wonderful read" - Guardian

"Incredibly timely ... wonderful elegance and clarity through which complex ideas are presented ... That the book helps make thinking about the state enjoyable is just the least of its many exceptional qualities" - Irish Times

"A brilliant introduction for anyone looking to engage with political debates beyond the headlines ... Excellent" - Herald

"A studiously accessible work" - Times Higher Education

"Praise for How Democracy Ends: Presented in pellucid prose free of the jargon of academic political science, it is a strikingly readable and richly learned contribution to understanding the world today...one of the most luminously intelligent books on politics to have been published for many years." - New Statesman

"Full of intriguing new lines of thought" - FT

"Clear-headed, compact and timely" - Irish Times

"Refreshingly free of received and rehearsed wisdoms, Runciman doesn't tiptoe around sacred cows and invites us to take part in that most adult way of thinking: to examine contradictory ideas in tandem and ponder what the dissonance amounts to. . . . [H]e argues lucidly, persuasively, even exhilaratingly at times. The nightly news will never appear exactly the same again" - Australian

"Refreshingly, rather than a knicker-twisting diatribe about Trump and Brexit, Runciman offers a thoughtful analysis about what popular democracy means, and its alternatives" - Spectator