Basically, I wrote this book as I usually write, from my gut, fact-checking where needed. However, there are books that did influence me subliminally.

Growing up, I was fascinated by dystopian classics from an early age. In seventh grade, I read George Orwell’s Animal Farm twelve times (one for each year of my life, I guess). The phrase “all pigs are equal but some are more equal than others” still resonates with me, as does the uncomfortable realization that class division is an inherent flaw of the human race, present throughout history, one of the reasons why utopias of all ideological stripes are doomed to fail. Then there was Orwell’s other classic, 1984. When that futuristic (now over thirty years old) date arrived, 1984 seemed rather overwrought. Sure, Ronald Reagan may have been President, but we still lived in a relatively free and open society with plenty of opportunity for free speech. Guess we just had wait another twenty-five years! The main nugget that stands out to me from 1984 is the ending, where the protagonist, Winston Smith is brainwashed to believe that “2 plus 2 is 5”. Seems like we are told to believe plenty of “alternative facts” such as this these days, and if they’re repeated often enough seemingly intelligent will believe them. It takes an effort of will to trust your own perceptions and do your own addition (or analysis).

Aldous Huxley’s writing style in Brave New World hasn’t stood the test of time. I re-read it a decade ago and found his wording tedious and dated, but his dystopian vision of a technocratic dictatorship gains relevance with each passing day. The use (misuse) of genetic manipulation as well as the sedation of the public with a tranquilizing drug (could be literal, or the mind-numbing hum of technological devices) ring disturbingly true.

The other topic that’s fascinated me—more as an adult—is the rise of totalitarian states. Not the finished product, but how they came to be. The most graphic representation of this in recent history, is, of course, the rise of Nazi Germany. I’m not particularly interested in World War Two from a battle standpoint, but how an intelligent, cultured society became enraptured by the evil cult of Nazism, now that interests me, and especially when it’s presented from the German point of view. That way we’re not looking outward at an enemy. We’re seeing how the enemy could be us. How it could happen here. Of particular interest is the journalist Joachim Fest’s “Not I”. Fest was a teenager during WWII and his father a liberal Catholic schoolmaster. The Fest family took risks to speak out against the Nazi regime , refusing to say “Heil Hitler” instead of “Hello” to people they met on the street (yes, that was a legal requirement!), keeping their children out of Hitler Youth until they were forcibly conscripted, hiding Jewish friend’s possessions, etc. And they suffered for it—Fest’s father lost his job, they lost their money, their home, their standing in the community. But they were never sent to a concentration camp, nor did they take the kind of risks that would lead to that kind of danger. The book contains an annoying measure of excuses and self justification of the “we didn’t know what was happening, we had to protect the children” variety but that in itself is part of the fascination of the book. How many people who consider themselves liberals in this country would really put their lives on the line to protect those who bear the brunt of an unjust government?

Fest also wrote another book, The Faces of the Third Reich, which sounds depressing and tedious but is well worth reading. In it, he analyzes the personalities of Hitler’s inner circle, and they are by no means a uniform group or cartoon villains. Some are gay, some are vegetarian, some fascinated with order, some fascinated by power, all of them drawn to Fascism by a complicated psychological/political chemistry.

The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt is another classic that sounds more tedious than it really is. Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism is brilliant. My biggest takeaway from this lengthy book? The idea that a society terrorized by secret police is not a totalitarian society but one in the making. The sign of true totalitarianism is when those police are no longer necessary, when citizens police themselves. Another book that serves as an excellent corollary to Arendt’s is Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom, a psychological analysis of why people are scared of freedom, and rush into the claustrophobic safety of external structure, rules and order.

Lastly, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, by Giorgio Bassani, is a haunting fictional exploration of a wealthy, insular Jewish family in Northern Italy who believe that their wealth will protect them from the Nazi aggression literally outside their walls…until it doesn’t. Bassini’s novella is also a superb movie.