Populism is not the opposite of modern democracy, but rather one of its most characteristic products; something that was born with it, that begins to decline at the same time as it does, and that will die alongside it. This is the argument made by Gibrán Ramírez Reyes in the book you hold in your hands. Systems of popular representation cannot represent the popular will, however much they may want to, but neither can they stop promising to do so, imagining that they do, or basing all their legitimacy on their capacity to do so. Populism would thus be the democratic principle rebelling against its institutional mechanisms; the will of popular sovereignty rebelling against a system designed to satisfy it. The inevitable demand for a promise that modern democracy cannot fail to make but also cannot fulfill. *Life and Death of Populism* narrates the history of this key tension from the 19th century to the present, and with it, the dual history of populism as both a phenomenon and a concept.