Read Of The Week (Aug 28 to Sept 3)

Based on the History Of Ideas podcast series by Talking Politics host David Runciman, Confronting Leviathan explores some of the most important concepts and prominent ideas behind modern politics — from Hobbes to Gandhi, from democracy to patriarchy, and from revolution to lockdowns.

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.

David Runciman is Professor of Politics at Cambridge University and the author of many books about politics. He writes regularly about politics and current affairs for a wide range of publications including the London Review of Books.