Summary

Chapter 12 states that we should, at all times, be friendly and considerate of those around us. Simple actions like a greeting, a handshake, or a smile can be extremely impactful. Accounts from those who survived tyrannical regimes demonstrate the importance of trusted personal contacts and the ways banal acts helped people withstand oppressive regimes.

Chapter 13 stresses the importance of physical interaction with others. Snyder argues that would-be tyrants hope that people will confine their political activities to electronic formats. Instead, though protests can be organized through social media, they must occur in the “three-dimensional world” to be effective (84). It is particularly important that people create coalitions between groups with differing but broadly intersecting interests. These coalitions are far more effective than single interest groups acting alone. To demonstrate this, the author presents the example of Poland’s Solidarity movement, which, by uniting workers...