Francis Fukuyama, 73, reflects on his famous 1989 essay "The End of History" in a new memoir, "In the Realm of the Last Man," publishing Sept. 8 via Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The essay, expanded into a 1992 bestseller, argued liberal democracy represented the final form of government. Fukuyama, then a State Department policy analyst, borrowed the phrase from Alexandre Kojève. He insists critics misunderstood: he referred to conceptual History, not events, and warned in later chapters that complacency — Nietzsche's "last man" — could breed rage against the establishment.

Decades later, Fukuyama sees populist unrest as vindication, not rebuttal. Yet he admits surprise at the form this took. His first book noted Donald Trump, then a New York real estate mogul, as someone whose ambition could be satisfied by wealth in a liberal system. "Little did I..." he recalls, trailing off. Based in Palo Alto, Fukuyama remains frustrated by superficial readings but acknowledges the "realm of the last man" looks different than anticipated.