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

One of Barack Obama's Recommended Reads for Summer "[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 "A convincing, humane, and hopeful guide to the present and future by one of our foremost democratic thinkers." --George Packer "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 From 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 Some 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,