All schoolchildren learn that ancient Athens was the birthplace of democracy, forebear of the philosophy of governance that Westerners now almost universally consider the natural right of every human being. But what does our system of protected freedoms, popular elections and checks and balances really share with the public congresses of Kleisthenes and Pericles? In this complement to his previous book, Democracy: The Unfinished Journey
(1992), British political theorist Dunn traces the roots of democratic rule, examining the motivations and tactics of its major proponents and detractors while deftly leading his readers through thousands of years of political rhetoric. As much a linguistic and sociological exploration as it is a political history, Dunn's book questions why this word, democracy
, has gone from a peculiar concept widely regarded as a failure to a term of ridicule and derision, then to its current status in all languages as an aspirational ideal. Dunn departs ancient Greece for the enlightened radicalism of the American Revolution and the jubilant chaos of the French Revolution in his quest to answer what exactly has given "this very old and much reviled word the stamina and drive to win through in the end." (July)
