From the renowned French historian and sociologist Emmanuel Todd, a masterful analysis of the crisis of the West. A bestseller with 80,000 copies sold in France and currently being translated into more than 10 countries. The author of La sconfitta dell'Occidente (Fazi Editore) will be with us, alongside Franco Cardini and Sergio Valzania.

Free admission without reservation.

The book:

La sconfitta dell'Occidente, the title of this essay by French historian and sociologist Emmanuel Todd, refers to a twofold defeat. It involves an external defeat, the war in Ukraine, but above all an internal one: the demographic, moral, and economic decline of Western societies. Todd holds the Western elites, particularly those in the United States, responsible, with the Russian-Ukrainian conflict serving as a magnifying lens. According to Todd, this conflict contrasts a stabilized Russia, once again a great power, with a West trapped in nihilism and in an irreversible crisis of hegemony.

Drawing on sociology, anthropology, and economics, Todd contrasts the "Western liberal oligarchies" with the "Russian authoritarian democracy" to explain the deeper reasons behind the ongoing geopolitical shifts. He provides a sharp and original analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the two warring nations (Russia and Ukraine), the major Western countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France), Scandinavian countries, and Eastern Europe, while also taking into account the broader global context. Readers will find the same elements that have always made Todd’s studies unique and valuable: the analysis of family models, demographic and economic statistics, brilliant writing, uncommon erudition, and ingenious insights.

Highly documented and based on five decades of research, far removed from the superficialities that characterize much of the debate on these topics, The Defeat of the West is an extraordinarily valuable contribution to understanding our present.

The author:

Emmanuel Todd, born in 1951, is an internationally renowned French historian, sociologist, and anthropologist, famous for being the first to predict, years in advance, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 2008 financial crisis. Among his works published in Italy are: The Economic Illusion (Marco Tropea Editore, 2004), After the Empire (Marco Tropea Editore, 2003), The Clash of Civilizations (with Youssef Courbage, Marco Tropea Editore, 2009), and A Brief History of Humanity (leg Edizioni, 2019).