Hannah Arendt

This new biography is the first interpretation of her life and work since 1982, and the first based on archival research and new materials. Arendt's way of thinking, the wide variety of her interlocutors and influences form an intellectual panorama of the twentieth century that is without parallel. It is an intellectual biography that attempts to explain the continuing fascination of the woman, friend, lover, journalist, Jew, human rights activist, philosopher and political theorist, and to help us better understand the "Arendt" phenomenon. At the same time, it illustrates the enormous provocation that continues to be associated with her name.