India, Oct. 17 -- Francis Fukuyama, who will turn 74 this October, begins In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir on January 20, 2025, the day Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. His second term, the American political scientist writes in the Preface, marked "a major shift in global politics". Fukuyama accuses Trump of bypassing Congress through executive orders, issuing illegal or unconstitutional diktats, siding with Russia against liberal democracies and imposing arbitrary tariffs on friendly countries. Only months into the presidency, he writes, "It is hard not to recognize that he is trying to turn the United States into an authoritarian country".

It is a revealing opening for the memoir of a man who...