Defending Democracy in the Hour of the Predator: Book Launch

Organized by the Columbia Global Paris Center.

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The English translation launch of Giuliano da Empoli’s latest book, The Hour of the Predator: Encounters with the Autocrats and Tech Billionaires Taking Over the World (Pushkin Press, 2025).

How do you defend democracy when the rules have changed?

Presidents turning into monarchs. Tech tycoons and autocrats intent on global regime change. Armies of cyber trolls.The old order is at an end. The Hour of the Predator has come.

Former political advisor Giuliano da Empoli takes us on an insider’s journey through this new reality, from the Glass Palace of the UN to the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton, from top secret meetings to violent power struggles. We encounter dictators and tyrants, strongmen and AI billionaires – geopolitical predators, and the flailing leaders who desperately try to appease them.

Just as in the age of the Borgias or the conquistadors, cynical scheming and brute force increasingly determine the course of international affairs. This is an urgent guide to our new world, and our uncertain future.

Speakers

Anna Bonalume is an Italian journalist and writer with a background in philosophy. She studied in Milan, Paris, São Paulo, and Berlin, and earned a doctorate from the École Normale Supérieure with a thesis on Nietzsche and Peirce. She has worked for France24, Rai 3, the UN at COP21, and the European Commission in Paris, and her articles have appeared in Le Monde, Le Point, Les Echos Weekend, Corriere della Sera, L’Espresso, and The Guardian. In 2022, she published Un mois avec un populiste (Fayard) and contributed to Empire: Centre et Périphéries (L’Harmattan). annabonalume.com

Giuliano da Empoli is an Italian and Swiss writer and political scientist living in France. He was once a senior advisor to Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. His debut novel, The Wizard of the Kremlin, has sold more than half a million copies in France, where it also won the Grand Prix du Roman and was a finalist for the Goncourt Prize. It has since gone on to become an international bestseller, being translated into thirty languages across the world.

Reid Hall, the Columbia Global Paris Center, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination are not responsible for the views and opinions expressed by their speakers and guests.