[3][4][5][6] From Dictatorship to Democracy (FDTD) was written in 1993 at the request of a prominent exiled Burmese democrat, Tin Maung Win, who was then editor of Khit Pyaing (The New Era Journal), in Bangkok, Thailand.

"[3] The book "started life in Myanmar as incendiary advice printed on a few sheets of paper and surreptitiously exchanged by activists living under a military dictatorship."

"[4] The Financial Times, in discussing the prospects for dictators worldwide, described Sharp as "the Lenin of the new Gandhi-ism" stating that What is new... is the wildfire spread of systematically non-violent insurgency.

This owes a great deal to the strategic thinking of Gene Sharp, an American academic whose how-to-topple-your-tyrant manual, From Dictatorship to Democracy, is the bible of activists from Belgrade to Rangoon.

[5] The BBC reported in 2004 that FDTD "was used practically as a textbook" in lectures attended by members of Otpor!, the Serbian resistance movement, in the year 2000.

[39] In 2012, The New York Times noted that FDTD was "available for download in more than two dozen languages" (and provided a link), while describing Sharp as a "leading [advocate] of grass-roots democracy.