Hannah Arendt was a brilliant philosopher, activist and writer. This book is very dense for one such as I who is a layman in this area, but by taking the time to retrace and reread it was understandable and impressive. I learned a lot of history, political ideas and anthropology, and found it a joy to read such a great thinker/writer describing and explaining difficult material. The book is great. ( )

I can only dream that I could write as well as Arendt. ( )

the first two volumes have a host of problematic issues that make them difficult to consult or reference without quite a lot of filtering and external qualification. they make many arguments that r either dubious or unoriginal (or both)

the third volume, while somewhat flawed in various ways, is an essential masterpiece ( )

This is a combination of three volumes, on respectively Antisemitism, Imperialism, and Totalitarianism. Obviously being one of the iconic books by an iconic writer of the twentieth century, it demands respectful attention. Unfortunately the style is very dense and mystifying, many of the sentences do not impart any sense on the first reading, the paragraphs go on without much structure or logical flow, there are huge footnotes in tiny print on most pages, there is an overload of references showcasing the author's erudition more than anything else, and the arguments or theoretical constructs are not always convincing. A very difficult book to read, probably requiring other, more modern, studies to achieve any understanding of these complex social-political processes and phenomena in a form that will be relevant to our current situations. ( )

Klassík. Umfjöllun Arendt um mótun, eðli og hugmyndafræði einræðisstjórna er grundvallarrit fyrir alla sem hafa áhuga á að kynna sér þversagnir einræðisríkja. Hvers vegna t.d. stjórnir Þýskalands og Sovétríkjanna hófu miskunnarlausa eyðingu margra hópa í eigin samfélagi sem olli þeim um leið ómældu efnahagslegu tjóni. Arendt rekur lógík einræðisríkjanna fyrir ofsóknum, skrefin sem tekin voru til að öðlast alræðisvald og hvernig valdaelítan varð svo öflug. ( )