Not long ago, a colleague who’s squeamish about horror movies described some of the scariest films she’d been able to make it through. One of the titles she mentioned? Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite. But wait, I thought, that’s not a horror movie. A tense thriller, maybe, a satirical drama with some frightening set pieces, but not something that would’ve been put on the “horror” shelf in video stores, back when video stores existed.

The short-lived Weimar Republic—which spanned the years after Germany’s defeat in World War I until 1933, when Hitler came to power—has become a paradigmatic example of democratic collapse. That has brought it renewed attention at this moment in America, when democracy is under threat from illiberal, would-be-authoritarian forces.

Photographs by Jack Lueders-BoothSince leaving the insurance business for photography in 1970, Jack Lueders-Booth has used light, handheld cameras to capture spontaneous moments among his subjects, whether they are motorcycle racers or women in prison, Tijuana garbage pickers or the denizens of his local corner store.

Last spring in Kyiv, in the spartan second-floor office of the Center for Civil Liberties—which has just received the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize—I met the organization’s leader, Oleksandra Matviychuk. I didn’t know much about her then, and she was pressed between appointments, and the interview threatened to become the kind whose purpose neither side understands. But within a few minutes I realized that she was a remarkable person doing remarkable work.

Two Republican governors last month sent asylum seekers to the two most Democratic places they could think of—Martha’s Vineyard and the doorstep of Kamala Harris’s house in Washington, D.C. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas have made no secret of the message they were trying to send: Immigrants are a burden, and one that Democratic states should share.