Fukuyama, Francis. Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. Farrar. Sept. 2018. 240p. ISBN 9780374129293. $26; ebk. ISBN 9780374717483. POLITICAL SCIENCE Stanford political scientist Fukuyama, who came swiftly to prominence with The End of History and the Last Man, most recently critiqued the dangerous rise of interest groups in 2014’s prescient Political Order and Political Decay. Here he looks at the issue of identity, contrasting liberal democracy’s grounding in universal recognition with a more telescoped vision based on nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, or gender, which he argues has led to everything from anti-immigrant sentiment to radical Islam. With a national tour to San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, New York, Washington, DC, and Baltimore. Krimstein, Ken. The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth. Bloomsbury. Sept. 2018. 240p. ISBN 9781635571882. $28. BIOGRAPHY Anyone can be the subject of a graphic biography, and New Yorker cartoonist Krimstein has chosen leading philosopher Hannah Arendt, whose celebrated The Origins of Totalitarianism was published in 1951 and has reemerged as a best seller following the rise of scabrous populism everywhere. Krimstein’s biography shows us Arendt’s repeated escape from Nazi persecution throughout Europe and finally to America, friendship with the likes of Walter Benjamin and Mary McCarthy, and complicated love for philosopher and Nazi sympathizer Martin Heidegger. The book that will make me a graphic-format reader. Miller, James. Can Democracy Work?: A Short History of a Radical Idea from Ancient Athens to Our World. Farrar. Sept. 2018. 320p. ISBN 9780374137649. $27; ebk. ISBN 9780374717247. POLITICAL SCIENCE A professor of politics and liberal studies at the New School for Social Research, Miller wrote a key work about 1960s protest, Democracy Is in the Streets, among other acclaimed titles. Here he examines the often-embattled idea of democracy, starting with the ancient Greeks, who preferred lottery to elections, which they saw as innately corrupt and undemocratic; moving through history (he points out that the French revolutionaries claimed that they embodied the will of the people but eventually repudiated them); and arriving at Occupy Wall Street. Big promotion. Stanley, Jason. How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Random. Sept. 2018. 256p. ISBN 9780525511830. $26; ebk. ISBN 9780525511847. Downloadable. POLITICAL SCIENCE Award-winning Yale philosophy professor Stanley (How Propaganda Works) understands fascism intuitively; his parents were refugees from World War II Europe. Worrying about today's fractured political arena, he argues that countries can have fascist strains without beingfascistic. Fascism means dividing a population to achieve power and claims ten “pillars”: the mythic past, propaganda, anti-intellectualism, unreality, hierarchy, victimhood, law and order, sexual anxiety, appeals to the heartland, and a dismantling of public welfare and unity. Keep your eyes peeled.