Derwent May’s “Hannah Arendt”
Book review by Dennis D. McDonald
There is a short list of writers whose thinking I greatly respect: Dante Alighieri, George Orwell, Umberto Eco, Barry Lopez, and Hannah Arendt.
This brief biography offers a thoughtful account of how Hannah Arendt’s thinking evolved over time, beginning with her upbringing in prewar Europe and continuing through her life after coming to the United States with other European Jews to escape Hitler and the deprivations of World War II.
Arendt’s views on totalitarianism and the evils of Nazism were complex and deeply nuanced. Her work first came to my attention through Antisemitism: Part One of The Origins of Totalitarianism in which she examined the political, social, and economic precursors to the rise of European fascism in the twentieth century.
Some short biographies merely skim the surface of their subject’s life. This one engages meaningfully with the intellectual foundations of Arendt’s work. It. helps explain, especially for armchair historians like myself, how Arendt arrived at her thinking and how it developed over time.
As a result of reading it, my list of books to tackle next now includes her controversial Eichmann in Jerusalem.
Review copyright © 2025 by Dennis D. McDonald.
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