German-Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-75) fled
from the Nazis to New York in 1941, and during the next thirty
years in America she wrote her best-known and most influential
works, such as The Human Condition, The Origins of Totalitarianism,
and On Revolution. Yet, despite the fact that a substantial portion
of her oeuvre was written in America, not Europe, no one has
directly considered the influence of America on her thought--until
now. In Arendt and America, historian Richard H. King argues that
while all of Arendt's work was haunted by her experience of
totalitarianism, it was only in her adopted homeland that she was
able to formulate the idea of the modern republic as an alternative
to totalitarian rule. Situating Arendt within the context of U.S.
intellectual, political, and social history, King reveals how
Arendt developed a fascination with the political thought of the
Founding Fathers. King also re-creates her intellectual exchanges
with American friends and colleagues, such as Dwight Macdonald and
Mary McCarthy, and shows how her lively correspondence with
sociologist David Riesman helped her understand modern American
culture and society. In the last section of Arendt and America,
King sets out the context in which the Eichmann controversy took
place and follows the debate about "the banality of evil" that has
continued ever since. As King shows, Arendt's work, regardless of
focus, was shaped by postwar American thought, culture, and
politics, including the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War. For
Arendt, the United States was much more than a refuge from Nazi
Germany; it was a stimulus to rethink the political, ethical, and
historical traditions of human culture. This authoritative
combination of intellectual history and biography offers a unique
approach for thinking about the influence of America on Arendt's
ideas and also the effect of her ideas on American thought.
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