@scifiJoan: You have to remember that Stoker wrote this in the 1890's, the late Victorian years. People at that time had no internet, movie theater, TV, or glam rock bands to compete with the written product. Were Stoker to have waited until 2020 to submit his work for publication, he would have received any number of "not quite what we're looking for" letters from all kinds of publishers. The book was slow, the diary format took a lot of the tension out of the confrontations - because, after all, the writer survived to record his or her thoughts - but people around the turn of that century ate it up. It didn't work for you - wouldn't work for most readers today - but the English and Americans of the day loved it.
@Crazy_Babe: re: "hard to share Runciman's optimism." We have to remember that the current political climate is not new. The elections of 1800 (Jefferson), 1828 (Jackson), 1860 (Lincoln), 1900 (McKinley), 1920 (Harding), 2000 (Bush), and others have all been quite challenging. This election is also quite challenging. I'm optimistic because no political cycle lasts forever. I just finished Max Hastings'
Vietnam, which is a detailed account (down to the individual soldiers in the field for all sides) of what happened in that country. In 1975, the Communist north took over the nation and imposed a terribly oppressive regime on all the people. Today, despite still being Communist, private enterprise and private property is making a comeback, simply because the socialist system has failed and continues to fail. We as a nation will persevere.
Or not.
History is made up of the actions of individuals, but history has no compassion for individuals. Like the Stephen Crane poem:
A man said to the universe, "Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe, "that fact has not produced in me
A sense of obligation."
All we can do is do the right thing and not lose hope in the doing of it.
