Recommendations from our site
“Arendt was a very insightful philosopher who lived through some of the darkest times in history and whose own life was deeply affected by her personal experience of Nazism and by the Holocaust. A German-born Jew, she fled her homeland in 1933 and then France, eventually settling in the US. Though published in 1951 and focused on the rise of Nazism and Stalinism, The Origins of Totalitarianism is extremely relevant today and to some degree prophetic. She analyses very carefully how society goes from being a free society to being very much not that.” Read more...
The best books on Prediction and Prophecy
Carissa Véliz, Philosopher
“The Origins of Totalitarianism is the first great book to try and understand totalitarianism. It’s a book of political theory, as well as a work of history and of philosophy. But it’s also a testimony. She started writing the book when she was a stateless person, a refugee in Vichy France.” Read more...
The best books on Human Rights and Literature
Lyndsey Stonebridge, Literary Scholar
“It’s a study of the various elements that crystallized in the appearance of totalitarianism in the 20th century. Arendt writes about the decline of the nation state, the privatisation of public political institutions. She writes about the rise of what today we would call ‘fake news’ and political propaganda. She writes about our inability to distinguish fact from fiction. She writes about mass rootlessness, homelessness. And she writes about the necessity of solitude and the dangers of loneliness.” Read more...
The best books on Hannah Arendt
Samantha Rose Hill, Philosopher
“Her most useful (and her most chilling) conclusion for today is that totalitarian tools were not specific to Nazism or Stalinism or any ideology. Arendt’s words should be studied today by those who want to prevent the further spread of authoritarian regimes and the ideologies they are propagating.” Read more...
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Historian
