A moving and unsettling exploration of a young man's formative years in a country still struggling with its past 
As a Jew in postwar Germany, Yascha Mounk felt like a foreigner in his own country. When he mentioned that he is Jewish, some made anti-Semitic jokes or talked about the superiority of the Aryan race. Others, sincerely hoping to atone for the country's past, fawned over him with a forced friendliness he found just as alienating. Vivid and fascinating, Stranger in My Own Country traces the contours of Jewish life in a country still struggling with the legacy of the Third Reich and portrays those who, inevitably, continue to live in its shadow. Marshaling an extraordinary range of material into a lively narrative, Mounk surveys his countrymen's responses to "the Jewish question." Examining history, the story of his family, and his own childhood, he shows that anti-Semitism and far-right extremism have long coexisted with self-conscious philo-Semitism in postwar Germany. But of late a new kind of resentment against Jews has come out in the open. Unnoticed by much of the outside world, the desire for a "finish line" that would spell a definitive end to the country's obsession with the past is feeding an emphasis on German victimhood. Mounk shows how, from the government's pursuit of a less "apologetic" foreign policy to the way the country's idea of the Volk makes life difficult for its immigrant communities, a troubled nationalism is shaping Germany's future.

Stranger in My Own Country: A Jewish Family in Modern Germany

Biographies & Memoirs

Mounk, Yascha

Community & Culture

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure

One of Barack Obama's Recommended Reads for Summer\n“[A] brave and necessary book . . . Anyone interested in the future of liberal democracy, in the US or anywhere else, should read this book.” —Anne Applebaum\n“A convincing, humane, and hopeful guide to the present and future by one of our foremost democratic thinkers.” —George Packer\n“A rare thing: [an] academic treatise . . . that may actually have influence in the arena of practical politics. . . . Passionate and personal.” —Joe Klein, New York Times Book Review\nFrom one of our sharpest and most important political thinkers, a brilliant big-picture vision of the greatest challenge of our time—how to bridge the bitter divides within diverse democracies enough for them to remain stable and functional\nSome democracies are highly homogeneous. Others have long maintained a brutal racial or religious hierarchy, with some groups dominating and exploiting others. Never in history has a democracy succeeded in being both diverse and equal, treating members of many different ethnic or religious groups fairly. And yet achieving that goal is now central to the democratic project in countries around the world. It is, Yascha Mounk argues, the greatest experiment of our time.\nDrawing on history, social psychology, and comparative politics, Mounk examines how diverse societies have long suffered from the ills of domination, fragmentation, or structured anarchy. So it is hardly surprising that most people are now deeply pessimistic that different groups might be able to integrate in harmony, celebrating their differences without essentializing them. But Mounk shows us that the past can offer crucial insights for how to do better in the future. There is real reason for hope.\nIt is up to us and the institutions we build whether different groups will come to see each other as enemies or friends, as strangers or compatriots. To make diverse democracies endure, and even thrive, we need to create a world in which our ascriptive identities come to matter less—not because we ignore the injustices that still characterize the United States and so many other countries around the world, but because we have succeeded in addressing them.\nThe Great Experiment is that rare book that offers both a profound understanding of an urgent problem and genuine hope for our human capacity to solve it. As Mounk contends, giving up on the prospects of building fair and thriving diverse democracies is simply not an option—and that is why we must strive to realize a more ambitious vision for the future of our societies.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Penguin Press

One of Barack Obama's Recommended Reads\nFrom one of our sharpest and most important political thinkers, a brilliant big-picture vision of the greatest challenge of our time—how to bridge the bitter divides within diverse democracies enough for them to remain stable and functional\nNever in history has a democracy succeeded in being both diverse and equal, treating different ethnic or religious groups fairly. And yet achieving that goal is now central to the democratic project. It is, Yascha Mounk argues, the greatest experiment of our time. Drawing on history, social psychology, and comparative politics, Mounk explains why we need to create a world in which our ascriptive identities come to matter less—not because we ignore global injustices, but because we have succeeded in addressing them.\nThe Great Experiment is that rare book that offers both a profound understanding of an urgent problem and genuine hope for our human capacity to solve it. As Mounk contends, it is up to us and the institutions we build whether we come to see each other as strangers or compatriots. Giving up on the prospect of diverse democracies is simply not an option—and that is why we must strive to realize a more ambitious vision for the future of our societies.

Penguin??Books

"The&nbsp;most comprehensive and reasonable story of this shift that has yet been attempted . . . Mounk has told the story of the Great Awokening better than any other writer who has attempted to make sense of it." - The Washington Post "Among the most insightful and important books written in the last decade on American democracy and its current torments, because it also shows us a way out of the trap."&nbsp;--Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind, and coauthor of The Coddling of the American Mind One of our leading public intellectuals traces the origin of a set of ideas about identity and social justice that is rapidly transforming America--and explains why it will fail to accomplish its noble goals. For much of history, societies have violently oppressed ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. It is no surprise that many who passionately believe in social justice came to believe that members of marginalized groups need to take pride in their identity to resist injustice. But over the past decades, a healthy appreciation for the culture and heritage of minority groups has transformed into a counterproductive obsession with group identity in all its forms. A new ideology aiming to place each person's matrix of identities at the center of social, cultural, and political life has quickly become highly influential. It stifles discourse, vilifies mutual influence as cultural appropriation, denies that members of different groups can truly understand one another, and insists that the way governments treat their citizens should depend on the color of their skin. This, Yascha Mounk argues, is the identity trap. Though those who battle for these ideas are full of good intentions, they will ultimately make it harder to achieve progress toward the genuine equality we desperately need. Mounk has built his acclaimed scholarly career on being one of the first to warn of the risks right-wing populists pose to American democracy. But, he shows, those on the left and center who are stuck in the identity trap are now inadvertent allies to the MAGA movement. In The Identity Trap, Mounk provides the most ambitious and comprehensive account to date of the origins, consequences, and limitations of so-called "wokeness." He is the first to show how postmodernism, postcolonialism, and critical race theory forged the "identity synthesis" that conquered many college campuses by 2010. He lays out how a relatively marginal set of ideas came to gain tremendous influence in business, media, and government by 2020. He makes a nuanced philosophical case for why the application of these ideas to areas from education to public policy is proving to be so deeply counterproductive--and why universal, humanist values can best serve the vital goal of true equality. In explaining the huge political and cultural transformations of the past decade, The Identity Trap provides truth and clarity where they are needed most.

The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time

History

Americas

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
Responsibility―which once meant the moral duty to help and support others―has come to be equated with an obligation to be self-sufficient. This has guided recent reforms of the welfare state, making key entitlements conditional on good behavior. Drawing on political theory and moral philosophy, Yascha Mounk shows why this re-imagining of personal responsibility is pernicious―and suggests how it might be overcome.
“This important book prompts us to reconsider the role of luck and choice in debates about welfare, and to rethink our mutual responsibilities as citizens.” ―Michael J. Sandel, author of Justice
“A smart and engaging book… Do we so value holding people accountable that we are willing to jeopardize our own welfare for a proper comeuppance?” ―New York Times Book Review
“An important new book… [Mounk] mounts a compelling case that political rhetoric…has shifted over the last half century toward a markedly punitive vision of social welfare.” ―Los Angeles Review of Books
“A terrific book. The insight at its heart―that the conception of responsibility now at work in much public rhetoric and policy is both punitive and ill-conceived―is very important and should be widely heeded.” ―Jedediah Purdy, author of After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene

The Age of Responsibility: Luck, Choice, and the Welfare State

World

Harvard University Press

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
“Everyone worried about the state of contemporary politics should read this book.” ―Anne-Marie Slaughter
“A trenchant survey from 1989, with its democratic euphoria, to the current map of autocratic striving.” ―David Remnick, New Yorker
The world is in turmoil. From Russia and Turkey across Europe to the United States, authoritarian populists have seized power as two core components of liberal democracy―individual rights and the popular will―are increasingly at war. As the role of money in politics has soared, a system of “rights without democracy” has taken hold. Populists who rail against this say they want to return power to the people. But in practice they create something just as bad: a system of “democracy without rights.” Yascha Mounk offers a clear and trenchant analysis of what ails our democracy and what it will take to get it back on track.
“Democracy is going through its worst crisis since the 1930s… But what exactly is the nature of this crisis? And what is driving it? The People vs. Democracy stands out in a crowded field for the quality of its answers to these questions.” ―The Economist
“Brilliant… As this superb book makes clear, we need both the liberal framework and the democracy, and bringing them back together is the greatest challenge of our time.” ―Los Angeles Times
“Extraordinary…provides a clear, concise, persuasive, and insightful account of the conditions that made liberal democracy work―and how the breakdown in those conditions is the source of the current crisis of democracy around the world.” ―The Guardian

The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It

A novel focus on “personal responsibility” has transformed political thought and public policy in America and Europe. Since the 1970s, responsibility―which once meant the moral duty to help and support others―has come to suggest an obligation to be self-sufficient. This narrow conception of responsibility has guided recent reforms of the welfare state, making key entitlements conditional on good behavior. Drawing on intellectual history, political theory, and moral philosophy, Yascha Mounk shows why the Age of Responsibility is pernicious―and how it might be overcome.
Personal responsibility began as a conservative catchphrase. But over time, leaders across the political spectrum came to subscribe to its underlying framework. Today, even egalitarian philosophers rarely question the normative importance of responsibility. Emphasizing the pervasive influence of luck over our lives, they cast the poor as victims who cannot be held responsible for their actions.
Mounk shows that today’s focus on individual culpability is both wrong and counterproductive: it distracts us from the larger economic forces determining aggregate outcomes, ignores what we owe our fellow citizens regardless of their choices, and blinds us to other key values, such as the desire to live in a society of equals. Recognizing that even society’s neediest members seek to exercise genuine agency, Mounk builds a positive conception of responsibility. Instead of punishing individuals for their past choices, he argues, public policy should aim to empower them to take responsibility for themselves―and those around them.

“We can no longer assume that liberal democracy is the wave of the future… This splendid book is an invaluable contribution to the debate about what ails democracy, and what can be done about it.” ―Michael J. Sandel, author of Justice
“Everyone worried about the state of contemporary politics should read this book.” ―Anne-Marie Slaughter, President of the New America Foundation
The world is in turmoil. From Russia, Turkey, and Egypt to the United States, authoritarian populists have seized power. As a result, democracy itself may now be at risk.
Two core components of liberal democracy―individual rights and the popular will―are increasingly at war with each other. As the role of money in politics soared and important issues were taken out of public contestation, a system of “rights without democracy” took hold. Populists who rail against this say they want to return power to the people. But in practice they create something just as bad: a system of “democracy without rights.” The consequence, as Yascha Mounk shows in this brilliant and timely book, is that trust in politics is dwindling. Citizens are falling out of love with their political system. Democracy is wilting away. Drawing on vivid stories and original research, Mounk identifies three key drivers of voters’ discontent: stagnating living standards, fear of multiethnic democracy, and the rise of social media. To reverse the trend, politicians need to enact radical reforms that benefit the many, not the few.
The People vs. Democracy is the first book to describe both how we got here and what we need to do now. For those unwilling to give up either individual rights or the concept of the popular will, Mounk argues that urgent action is needed, as this may be our last chance to save democracy.

'Anyone interested in the future of liberal democracy should read this book' 
ANNE APPLEBAUM\nOne of our most important political thinkers looks to the greatest challenge of our time: how to live together equally and peacefully in diverse democracies.\nIt's easy to be pessimistic about the fate of democracy in multi-ethnic societies. At the end of the Second World War, fewer than one in twenty-five people living in the UK were born abroad; now it is one in seven. The history of humankind is a story of us versus them, and the project of diverse democracies is a relatively new one - it is, in other words, a great experiment.\nHow do identity groups with different ideologies and beliefs live together? Is it possible to embark on a democracy with shared values if our values are at odds?\nYascha Mounk argues that group identity is both deeply rooted and malleable. No community is beyond conciliation: groups are moving towards cooperation across the world. The Great Experiment offers a profound understanding of the problem behind all our other problems, and genuine hope for our capacity to solve it.

The Great Experiment: How to Make Diverse Democracies Work

Professionals & Academics

Bloomsbury Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mounk, Yascha. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Mounk, Yascha

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mounk, Yascha. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Stranger in My Own Country: A Jewish Family in Modern Germany

Stranger in My Own Country: A Jewish Family in Modern Germany

The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure

The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure

The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time

The Age of Responsibility: Luck, Choice, and the Welfare State

The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It

The Age of Responsibility: Luck, Choice, and the Welfare State

The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It

The Great Experiment: How to Make Diverse Democracies Work