American Political Scientist, Francis Fukuyama joins us to talk about his new memoir, 'In The Realm Of The Last Man'.

In The Realm of the Last Man

In 1989, one year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama - then an early-career academic who had cut his teeth conducting research for Ronald Reagan during his years as California governor - delivered a conference paper that would go on to become one of the most celebrated -and controversial - works of political theory of our time: The End of History.

By 2009, he had broken with his neoconservative mentors, from Allan Bloom to Paul Wolfowitz, after recanting his support for the 'disastrous' invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the laissez-faire economics that produced the financial crash of 2008.

But why did he change his mind? In this powerful political memoir, encompassing his father's involvement in the civil rights movement and his own work on CIA contracts in the 1980s, Fukuyama analyses his life alongside the seismic political shifts of the last thirty years - from Bush to Obama to Trump, from the War on Terror to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Profound and provocative, this is an intimate portrait of one of the twenty-first century's most important thinkers, an urgent study of contemporary politics - and a treatise on how the West can claw democracy back from the brink.

Francis Fukuyama

Francis Fukuyama is an American Political Scientist. He is best known for his book 'The End of History and The Last Man' which controversially argued that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and Western free-market capitalism may represent the final step in humanities sociocultural evolution and political struggle and the final form of human governement.

Fukuyama began his studies at Cornell University in 1970, majoring in classics and studying with philosopher Allan Bloom; he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1974. Fukuyama then began graduate work in comparative literature at Yale University under the supervision of literary critic and theorist Paul de Man, but did not complete his degree. Instead, he enrolled in the PhD program at Harvard University, receiving his doctorate in political science in 1981. His thesis focused on Soviet foreign policy in the Middle East.

He has received numerous awards and honors. In 2016, Harvard University bestowed its Centennial Medal on him. He received the 2024 Fred Riggs Award for Lifetime Achievement in International and Comparative Public Administration from the Section on International and Comparative Administration of the American Society for Public Administration.

Fukuyama’s influence extends to numerous fields, including political philosophy, philosophy of history, international affairs, and bioethics.

Nigel Warburton

Nigel Warburton is an author and public philosopher. He is co-host of the podcast 'Philosophy Bites' alongside David Edmonds and the author of many books including the bestselling 'A Little History of Philosophy'. He has also been the host of Blackwell Oxford's 'Philosophy in the Bookshop' series of events since 2014.

Description supplied by the event organiser.