The essential collection of a fearless thinker who argued for justice and hope in an anguished century. She was a Jew born in Germany in the early twentieth century, and she studied with the greatest German minds of her day-Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers among them. After the rise of the Nazis, she emigrated to America where she proceeded to write some of the most searching, hard-hitting reflections on the agonizing issues of the time: totalitarianism in both Nazi and Stalinist garb; Zionism and the legacy of the Holocaust; federally mandated school desegregation and civil rights in the United States; and the nature of evil. The Portable Hannah Arendt offers substantial excerpts from the three works that ensured her international and enduring stature: The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and Eichmann in Jerusalem. Additionally, this volume includes several other provocative essays, as well as her correspondence with other influential figures.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was born in Hanover, Germany, and came to the United States as a refugee from the Nazis in 1940. A philosopher and political theorist, she held several academic posts, most notably at the New School for Social Research beginning in 1967.

Peter Baehr teaches in the department of politics and sociology at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.