New Releases by Hannah Arendt

Una valiosa e inédita aportación de Hannah Arendt al conflicto entre Israel y Palestina. En 1944, la corriente sionista europea estaba a punto de lograr el objetivo de fundar su propio Estado en territorio palestino. Fueron muchos los intelectuales que participaron de este planteamiento, entre ellos Hannah Arendt, quien elaboró un breve estudio acerca de la viabilidad del proyecto, posicionándose a favor de la creación del Estado de Israel, aunque con ciertas reticencias: este asentamiento no debía realizarse sin establecer las condiciones con claridad, debido al peligro de desembocar en una convivencia truncada y hostil. Advirtió, además, de que Estados Unidos podría aprovecharse de la situación para apropiarse del petróleo de la región. Sobre Palestina alberga una funesta premonición que había permanecido inédita hasta hoy. Tanto en el prólogo como en el epílogo, el filósofo Thomas Meyer da cuenta del contexto del manuscrito de la pensadora judía y del porqué de que nunca se publicara, amén de las presiones recibidas por parte de los comités de apoyo sionista. En este volumen también se incorpora el memorándum titulado "El problema de los refugiados palestinos", redactado por varios autores en 1958 -entre los que figura, a disgusto de ella, Hannah Arendt- y publicado por el Institute for Mediterranean Affairs, un estudio en forma de esclarecedor catálogo de cuestiones acerca del conflicto palestino, redactado diez años después de que el Estado de Israel se hiciera realidad, del modo en que Arendt había temido y pronosticado. La crítica ha dicho: «Estos dos textos son un descubrimiento». Die Zeit «Una lectura muy útil. Estos textos son más que testigos de su época y documentos del periodismo político de Arendt». Neue Zürcher Zeitung «El biógrafo y editor de Arendt, Thomas Meyer, describe este texto, hasta el momento desconocido para los lectores de Arendt [...], como una "sensación". No le falta razón». Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung «Una voz por recuperar al buscar posibles caminos que nos permitan avanzar en la resolución de este terrible conflicto». Catalunya Plural «¿Por qué no retomar este viejo documento para, al menos, valorar algunas aproximaciones a este conflicto al parecer tan irresoluble y que, sin embargo, tal vez pueda resolverse?». RBB Radio3 «Sus escritos son una advertencia contra la imposición de teorías políticas abstractas, incluso brillantes, sobre un problema político concreto». Susie Linfield «Arendt describe con agudeza el papel emergente de Estados Unidos en la región y al mismo tiempo advierte a las fuerzas sionistas que no deben permitir que la zona se convierta en el puesto de avanzadilla de la geopolítica estadounidense». Der Tagesspiegel

A landmark literary event, What Remains collects Arendt’s complete poetic oeuvre—never before published in English. Internationally renowned as one of the twentieth century’s foremost public intellectuals, Hannah Arendt was also intensely private. Though she often acknowledged that the language of poetry—especially that of Dickinson, Goethe, and Lowell—informed her work, only a few people knew that Arendt herself wrote poems. In fact, between 1923 and 1961, Arendt wrote seventy-four poems, many of them signposts in an otherwise unwritten autobiography. For nearly forty years after her death, these poems remained hidden among the archives of the Library of Congress, until 2011, when they were rediscovered by scholar and translator Samantha Rose Hill. Now, for the first time in English, Hill and Genese Grill present Arendt’s poems in chronological order, taking us from the zenith of the Weimar Republic to the Cold War, and from Marburg, Germany, to New York’s Upper West Side. Throughout, Arendt uses poetry to mark moments of joy, love, loss, and reflection. In “W. B.,” written in 1942, she remembers Walter Benjamin, who died near the French-Spanish border while attempting to flee the Nazis: “Gentle whispering melodies / Sound from the darkness. / We listen so we can let go.” So, too, she reflects on mutability and transience in 1946: “I know that the houses have fallen. / We entered the world in them, wonderfully sure, that they / were more durable than ourselves.” She tries to understand her place in the world: “Ironically foolish, / I’ve forgotten nothing, / I know the emptiness, / I know the burden, / I dance, I dance / In ironic splendor.” A gift to all readers of Arendt, this stunning, dual-language edition provides an unparalleled view into the inner sanctum of one of our most original thinkers.

From Hannah Arendt, the author of The Origins of Totalitarianism, her influential essay examining the relationship between violence, power, war and politics 'Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it' Why has violence played such a significant role in human history? Written in 1970, with the Holocaust and Hiroshima still fresh in recent memory, war in Vietnam raging and the streets of Europe and America exploding into student protest, Hannah Arendt's seminal work dissects violence in the twentieth century: its nature and causes, its relationship with politics and war, its role in the modern age. Arendt warns against the glamorization of violence by revolutionary causes, and argues that true, lasting power can never grow 'out of the barrel of a gun'. 'Incisive, deeply probing, written with clarity and grace, it provides an ideal framework for understanding the turbulence of our times' The Nation With an introduction by Arendt expert, Lyndsey Stonebridge, Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham.

«Leer a Hannah Arendt permite comprender mejor el presente.» Berliner Morgenpost ¿Qué es la libertad y qué significa para nosotros? ¿Consiste solo en la ausencia de miedo y restricciones, o acaso implica también la participación en procesos sociales, con voz política propia, ser escuchado, reconocido y finalmente recordado por otros? Publicado en Estados Unidos en los años sesenta pero inédito hasta hoy en español -y en alemán-, este ensayo refleja el rigor y la fuerza del pensamiento político de Hannah Arendt y condensa con precisión y maestría sus reflexiones sobre la libertad, de gran calado y capaces de conectar de manera asombrosa con los desafíos y peligros de nuestro tiempo. Arendt rastrea el desarrollo histórico de la noción de libertad, en particular, toma en cuenta las revoluciones en Francia y América. Mientras que la primera supuso un punto de inflexión en la historia pero terminó en desastre, la otra fue un éxito triunfal pero se mantuvo como un asunto local. Repensar la idea de revolución se ha vuelto imperioso hoy, y este reencuentro con Hannah Arendt representa el impulso necesario para las nuevas generaciones. La crítica ha dicho: «Hannah Arendt tuvo una fecunda relación con la teoría política, un campo del saber que revindicó con ahínco y que le sirvió para sobrellevar todas las crisis políticas y personales de los amargos tiempos que le tocó vivir. Hoy, como entonces, el vocabulario que empleó para pensar y narrar el mundo, sus reflexiones y esa escritura tan bella, tan suya, nos ayudan a interpretar lo que nos ocurre, aunque solo sea como simples enanos mirando el mundo a hombros de gigantes. Ella, desde luego, lo fue.» Máriam Martínez-Bascuñán, Babelia, El País «Este ensayo recién redescubierto es como una petición de compromiso político en la era de Trump.» Die Zeit «Pese a haber sido escrito hace cincuenta años, es tan moderno que parece pensado para la actualidad política mundial.» Westdeutscher Rundfunk «Breve y revelador. Escrito hace más de cincuenta años, es de una vigencia pasmosa.» Deutschlandfunk Kultur «Una pieza muy atractiva y perdida por largo tiempo.» Süddeutsche Zeitung «Este texto tiene futuro hoy.» Frankfurter Rundschau «Un texto muy sugerente, que además es perfecto para los recién llegados a Arendt.» Zeitzeichen «Un ensayo inspirador de una relevancia extraordinaria, especialmente en tiempos en que se cuestionan los valores liberales del orden democrático.» Philosophie «Lo que parece un análisis preciso de la fallida construcción de la nación por medios militares, desde Somalia hasta Irak y Afganistán, en realidad tiene cinco décadas de antigüedad.» Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung «Vale la pena leerlo por la claridad de su razonamiento, por ejemplo a la hora de fijar el concepto de "revolución" y reflejar su cambio histórico de significado.» Badische Neueste Nachrichten

Hannah Arendt was born in Germany in 1906 and lived in America from 1941 until her death in 1975. Thus her life spanned the tumultuous years of the twentieth century, as did her thought. She did not consider herself a philosopher, though she studied and maintained close relationships with two great philosophers—Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger—throughout their lives. She was a thinker, in search not of metaphysical truth but of the meaning of appearances and events. She was a questioner rather than an answerer, and she wrote what she thought, principally to encourage others to think for themselves. Fearless of the consequences of thinking, Arendt found courage woven in each and every strand of human freedom. In 1951 she published The Origins of Totalitarianism, in 1958 The Human Condition, in 1961 Between Past and Future, in 1963 On Revolution and Eichmann in Jerusalem, in 1968 Men in Dark Times, in 1970 On Violence, in 1972 Crises of the Republic, and in 1978, posthumously, The Life of the Mind. Starting at the turn of the twenty-first century, Schocken Books has published a series of collections of Arendt’s unpublished and uncollected writings, of which Thinking Without a Banister is the fifth volume. The title refers to Arendt’s description of her experience of thinking, an activity she indulged without any of the traditional religious, moral, political, or philosophic pillars of support. The book’s contents are varied: the essays, lectures, reviews, interviews, speeches, and editorials, taken together, manifest the relentless activity of her mind as well as her character, acquainting the reader with the person Arendt was, and who has hardly yet been appreciated or understood. (Edited and with an introduction by Jerome Kohn)

This is an age of great calamities. War and revolution, famine and pestilence, are again rampant on this planet, and they still exact their deadly toll from suffering humanity. Calamities influence every moment of our existence: our mentality and behavior, our social life and cultural processes. Like a demon, they cast their shadow upon every thought we think and every action we perform. In this classic volume, Sorokin attempts to account for the effects these calamities exert on the mental processes, behavior, social organization, and cultural life of the population involved. In what way do famine and pestilence, war and revolution tend to modify our mind and conduct, our social organization and cultural life? To what extent do they succeed in this, and when and why do they prove less effective? What are the causes of these calamities, and what are the ways out? In dealing with these problems Sorokin tries to give a detailed description of the typical effects of famine and pestilence, war and revolution, such as have repeatedly occurred in all major catastrophes of this kind. To use academic language, he attempts to formulate the principal uniformities regularly manifested during such calamities. This book is a forgotten masterpiece of explanation and prediction. It opened new fields of study and broadened the scope of existing specialties.

Cuando se cumplen cien años del nacimiento de Hannah Arendt, reeditamos un documento fundamental para entender no solo la obra y la vida de la gran pensadora alemana sino también la biografía moral, política e intelectual de la segunda mitad del siglo XX. La correspondencia que la autora de Eichmann en Jerusalén o Los orígenes del totalitarismo mantuvo a lo largo de veinticinco años con Mary McCarthy, una de las novelistas y ensayistas norteamericanas más brillantes del pasado siglo, constituye, en efecto, un diálogo inteligentísimo, edificante, ameno e iluminador sobre la historia y la cultura de Europa y Estados Unidos desde los años posteriores a la Segunda Guerra Mundial hasta las secuelas de los movimientos del 68, además del emotivo testimonio de una amistad -intensa y vibrante- entre dos de las mujeres más lúcidas de su tiempo. La crítica ha dicho... «Uno de los diálogos más inteligentes que se han dado en el siglo.» The New York Times «Un agudo diagnóstico de nuestro tiempo.» The Washington Post «Da testimonio de una delicada situación geopolítica, la que puso en relación a la hegemónica potencia estadounidense con una maltrecha Alemania que trataba de rehacerse —ya no solo materialmente, sino identitariamente— después de más de una década bajo el régimen nazi. [...] Amén del cuidadoso y lúcido análisis sociocultural, el volumen también da cuenta de la relación entre dos mujeres de gran y diversa inteligencia, capaces de iluminarse entre sí y de encontrar formas de discurso alternativas en una intimidad descapitalizada, abierta, honesta». Zenda «El vocabulario que empleó [Arendt] para pensar y narrar el mundo, sus reflexiones y esa escritura tan bella, tan suya, nos ayudan a interpretar lo que nos ocurre, aunque solo sea como simples enanos mirando el mundo a hombros de gigantes. Ella, desde luego, lo fue.» Máriam Martínez-Bascuñán, Babelia «Hannah Arendt volvió a pensar el espacio público después de su destrucción y nosotros debemos volver a ella para prevenir que se destruya de nuevo.» Andreu Jaume «[McCarthy posee] una de las plumas más ágiles y más divertidamente corrosivas de la literatura anglosajona del siglo xx.» Fernando Schwartz, El País «Lo destacable de la escritura de McCarthy es esa nitidez de pensamiento, esa conciencia en estado de claridad que puede mirar a su alrededor sin dejar de verse a sí misma.» Lourdes Ventura, El Cultural «Discuten, se critican, se admiran, se leen, se echan de menos. Se cuentan sus problemas, sus altibajos, sus alegrías, sus relaciones personales. En fin, lo habitual entre dos amigas, pero con el ingenio, la espontaneidad y la fluidez que ambas empleaban en el oficio literario que ocupaba su existencia». Ana M. Serrano, Loff «El testimonio de una excelente y conmovedora amistad. [...] Un libro valioso y ameno.» Los Angeles Time

Arendt was one of the most important thinkers of her time, famous for her idea of "the banality of evil" which continues to provoke debate. This collection provides new and startling insight into Arendt's thoughts about Watergate and the nature of American politics, about totalitarianism and history, and her own experiences as an émigré. Hannah Arendt: The Last Interview and Other Conversations is an extraordinary portrait of one of the twentieth century's boldest and most original thinkers. As well as Arendt's last interview with French journalist Roger Errera, the volume features an important interview from the early 60s with German journalist Gunter Gaus, in which the two discuss Arendt's childhood and her escape from Europe, and a conversation with acclaimed historian of the Nazi period, Joachim Fest, as well as other exchanges. These interviews show Arendt in vigorous intellectual form, taking up the issues of her day with energy and wit. She offers comments on the nature of American politics, on Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, on Israel; remembers her youth and her early experience of anti-Semitism, and then the swift rise of the Hitler; debates questions of state power and discusses her own processes of thinking and writing. Hers is an intelligence that never rests, that demands always of her interlocutors, and her readers, that they think critically. As she puts it in her last interview, just six months before her death at the age of 69, "there are no dangerous thoughts, for the simple reason that thinking itself is such a dangerous enterprise."

Few thinkers have addressed the political horrors and ethical complexities of the twentieth century with the insight and passionate intellectual integrity of Hannah Arendt. She was irresistible drawn to the activity of understanding, in an effort to endow historic, political, and cultural events with meaning. Essays in Understanding assembles many of Arendt’s writings from the 1930s, 1940s, and into the 1950s. Included here are illuminating discussions of St. Augustine, existentialism, Kafka, and Kierkegaard: relatively early examinations of Nazism, responsibility and guilt, and the place of religion in the modern world: and her later investigations into the nature of totalitarianism that Arendt set down after The Origins of Totalitarianism was published in 1951. The body of work gathered in this volume gives us a remarkable portrait of Arendt’s developments as a thinker—and confirms why her ideas and judgments remain as provocative and seminal today as they were when she first set them down.

Although Hannah Arendt is not primarily known as a Jewish thinker, she probably wrote more about Jewish issues than any other topic. When she was in her mid-twenties and still living in Germany, Arendt wrote about the history of German Jews as a people living in a land that was not their own. In 1933, at the age of twenty-six, she fled to France, where she helped to arrange for German and eastern European Jewish youth to quit Europe and become pioneers in Palestine. During her years in Paris, Arendt’s principal concern was with the transformation of antisemitism from a social prejudice to a political policy, which would culminate in the Nazi “final solution” to the Jewish question–the physical destruction of European Jewry. After France fell at the beginning of World War II, Arendt escaped from an internment camp in Gurs and made her way to the United States. Almost immediately upon her arrival in New York she wrote one article after another calling for a Jewish army to fight the Nazis, and for a new approach to Jewish political thinking. After the war, her attention was focused on the creation of a Jewish homeland in a binational (Arab-Jewish) state of Israel. Although Arendt’s thoughts eventually turned more to the meaning of human freedom and its inseparability from political life, her original conception of political freedom cannot be fully grasped apart from her experience as a Jew. In 1961 she attended Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem. Her report on that trial, Eichmann in Jerusalem, provoked an immense controversy, which culminated in her virtual excommunication from the worldwide Jewish community. Today that controversy is the subject of serious re-evaluation, especially among younger people in America, Europe, and Israel. The publication of The Jewish Writings–much of which has never appeared before–traces Arendt’s life and thought as a Jew. It will put an end to any doubts about the centrality, from beginning to end, of Arendt’s Jewish experience.

After the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951, Hannah Arendt undertook an investigation of Marxism, a subject that she had deliberately left out of her earlier work. Her inquiry into Marx’s philosophy led her to a critical examination of the entire tradition of Western political thought, from its origins in Plato and Aristotle to its culmination and conclusion in Marx. The Promise of Politics tells how Arendt came to understand the failure of that tradition to account for human action. From the time that Socrates was condemned to death by his fellow citizens, Arendt finds that philosophers have followed Plato in constructing political theories at the expense of political experiences, including the pre-philosophic Greek experience of beginning, the Roman experience of founding, and the Christian experience of forgiving. It is a fascinating, subtle, and original story, which bridges Arendt’s work from The Origins of Totalitarianism to The Human Condition, published in 1958. These writings, which deal with the conflict between philosophy and politics, have never before been gathered and published. The final and longer section of The Promise of Politics, titled “Introduction into Politics,” was written in German and is published here for the first time in English. This remarkable meditation on the modern prejudice against politics asks whether politics has any meaning at all anymore. Although written in the latter half of the 1950s, what Arendt says about the relation of politics to human freedom could hardly have greater relevance for our own time. When politics is considered as a means to an end that lies outside of itself, when force is used to “create” freedom, political principles vanish from the face of the earth. For Arendt, politics has no “end”; instead, it has at times been–and perhaps can be again–the never-ending endeavor of the great plurality of human beings to live together and share the earth in mutually guaranteed freedom. That is the promise of politics.

Responsabilidad y juicio es una obra esencial para entender la concepción que Arendt tiene de la moral; es también una investigación indispensable sobre algunas de las cuestiones más preocupantes de nuestro tiempo. El núcleo de este libro es una profunda investigación ética: « Algunas cuestiones de filosofía moral»; en él Arendt aborda la insuficiencia de las «verdades» morales tradicionales como normas para juzgar lo que somos capaces de hacer, y examina desde una nueva óptica nuestra capacidad para distinguir el bien y el mal. Cada uno de los libros que Hannah Arendt publicó en vida fue una pieza única que sigue propiciando nuevas reflexiones e interpretaciones. Responsabilidad y juicio reúne una serie de escritos inéditos correspondientes a la última década de la vida de Arendt, cuando se esforzaba por explicar el sentido de una de sus obras más importantes: Eichmann en Jerusalén, el relato del juicio de Adolf Eichmann, donde empleó por primera vez el término «banalidad del mal».

The perfect books for the true book lover, Penguin's Great Ideas series features twelve more groundbreaking works by some of history's most prodigious thinkers. Each volume is beautifully packaged with a unique type-driven design that highlights the bookmaker's art. Offering great literature in great packages at great prices, this series is ideal for those readers who want to explore and savor the Great Ideas that have shaped our world. Inspired by the trial of a bureaucrat who helped cause the Holocaust, this radical work on the banality of evil stunned the world with its exploration of a regime's moral blindness and one man's insistence that he be absolved all guilt because he was 'only following orders'.

Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, where she addresses fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. At the heart of the book is a profound ethical investigation, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” in which Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral “truths” as standards to judge what we are capable of doing and examines anew our ability to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. We also see how Arendt comes to understand that alongside the radical evil she had addressed in earlier analyses of totalitarianism, there exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed. Responsibility and Judgment is an indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling and important issues of our time.

Hannah Arendt reunió en este volumen siete ensayos escritos en las décadas de 1930 y de 1940: “Sobre el imperialismo”, “Culpa organizada”, “La tradición oculta”, “Los judíos en el mundo de ayer”, “Franz Kafka”, “La Ilustración y la cuestión judía” y “El sionismo. Una retrospectiva”. Como explica la autora en la “Dedicatoria a Karl Jaspers” que abre el libro, todos y cada uno de estos ensayos están escritos teniendo presente el destino del pueblo judío en el siglo XX. Son testimonios tempranos del interés de Hannah Arendt por la cuestión judía, que ocupó a su autora durante toda su vida. Muestran hasta qué punto el conjunto de su pensamiento histórico-político estuvo marcado por su reflexión sobre la autoconcepción del pueblo judío en la modernidad y sobre la historia de los judíos desde la Ilustración. La historia de su publicación confiere a estos escritos una importancia que va más allá de su contenido concreto: la mayoría de ellos se remontan a Sechs Essays (1948), la primera obra publicada por la autora en la Alemania de posguerra. De este modo, este volumen también testimonia la voluntad de Hannah Arendt de contribuir, desde una perspectiva decididamente judía, al análisis crítico del pasado que comenzó en Alemania después de 1945.

Las figuras sobre las que Hannah Arendt reflexiona en este libro tienen en común tan sólo la época que les tocó vivir. ¿Cuáles fueron las respuestas de Karl Jaspers, Juan XXIII, Isak Dinesen, Walter Benjamin, Hermann Broch o Bertolt Brecht, entre otros, a

The correspondence starts in August, 1936, when Arendt traveled to Geneva to attend the founding conference of the World Jewish Congress, and ends in September, 1968, when she was in Basle for the celebration of Karl Jaspers' eightieth birthday.".

"A profound and documented analysis....Bound to stir our minds and trouble our consciences."-Chicago Tribune.

"A passionate, humane intelligence addressing itself to the fundamental problem of how the mind operates." — Newsweek Considered by many to be Hannah Arendt's greatest work, published as she neared the end of her life, The Life of the Mind investigates thought itself, as it exists in contemplative life. In a shift from her previous writings, most of which focus on the world outside the mind, this work was planned as three volumes that would explore the activities of the mind considered by Arendt to be fundamental. What emerged is a rich, challenging analysis of human mental activity, considered in terms of thinking, willing, and judging. This final achievement, presented here in a complete one-volume edition, may be seen as a legacy to our own and future generations.

"How could such a book speak so powerfully to our present moment? The short answer is that we, too, live in dark times, even if they are different and perhaps less dark, and "Origins" raises a set of fundamental questions about how tyranny can arise and the dangerous forms of inhumanity to which it can lead." Jeffrey C. Isaac, The Washington Post Hannah Arendt's definitive work on totalitarianism and an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political history The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I. Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time--Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia--which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.

Four thought-provoking political essays by the author of The Origins of Totalitarianism. Taking an in-depth look at the tumult of the 1960s and '70s, one of the great political philosophers of our era examines how these crises challenged the American form of government. "Lying in Politics" is a penetrating analysis of the Pentagon Papers that deals with the role of image-making and public relations. "Civil Disobedience" examines various opposition movements, from the Freedom Riders to the war resisters to the segregationists. And in two additional essays, Hannah Arendt delves into issues of revolution and violence. Wise and insightful, these pieces offer historical perspective on problems and controversies that still plague the United States in the twenty-first century.

In the second volume of The Origins of Totalitarianism, the political theorist traces the decline of European colonialism and the outbreak of WWI. Since it was first published in 1951, The Origins of Totalitarianism has been recognized as the definitive philosophical account of the totalitarian mindset. A probing analysis of Nazism, Stalinism, and the "banality of evil", it remains one of the most referenced works in studies and discussions of totalitarian movements around the world. In this second volume, Imperialism, Dr. Hannah Arendt examines the cruel epoch of declining European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of the First World War. Through portraits of Disraili, Cecil Rhodes, Gobineau, Proust, and T.E. Lawrence, Arendt illustrates how this era ended with the decline of the nation-state and the disintegration of Europe's class society. These two events, Arendt argues, generated totalitarianism, which in turn produced the Holocaust. "The most original and profound—therefore the most valuable—political theorist of our times."—Dwight MacDonald, The New Leader

Collection of essays which present portraits of individuals ranging from Rosa Luxemburg to Pope John XXIII who the author believes have illuminated "dark times."