See NPRs interview (below) with Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt about their new book, HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE
Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies have collapsed elsewhere—not just through violent coups, but more commonly (and insidiously) through a gradual slide into authoritarianism.
I saw the authors on C-SPAN speaking at the Cambridge Public Library, and ordered their book this weekend.