Harvest books

Recognized on publication as the definitive account of its subject, [The Origins of Totalitarianism](/works/OL10460640W) remains the foundation for continuing discussion. In this first volume of her monumental study Dr. Arendt traces the rise of antisemitism in Central and Western European Jewish history in the nineteenth century, delineating the part Jews played in the development of the nation-state on one hand and in Gentile society on the other. With the appearance of the first antisemitic parties in the 1870's and Dr. Arendt States, the way was opened that ended in the "final solution." And she views the Dreyfus affair as "a kind of dress rehearsal for the performance of our time"— the first characteristically modern use of antisemitism as an instrument of public policy and of hysteria as a political weapon.

This arguement was written in the 1920's in the United States when there was a shift from the harmonious in art to the dischordant as exemplified by Picasso. Humankind was being preceived as losing it's 'soul' or what made it 'human' in a world of growing technology, more knowledge and science. This work focuses on the loss of identity facing humankind in light of such. The Modern Temper is a very carefully orchestrated treatise that strips it's reader of everything leaving them psychologically nude either accepting the existence of a God or rejecting such leaving them dead inside without hope, meaning, identity, purpose, direction or joy. It is a book that is comforted by times before the thrust of science and new, harsh, cold idealogies were coming into vogue.