Hannah Arendt at The American Library in Paris

Samantha Rose Hill and D.N. Rodowick in conversation

As part of their Evenings with an Author series, The American Library in Paris hosted a virtual and in-person event with Samantha Rose Hill, who discussed her new book, Hannah Arendt, a volume in Reaktion’s Critical Lives book series. Hannah Arendt is one of the most renowned political thinkers of the twentieth century and her work has never been more relevant than it is today. The book weaves together new biographical detail, archival documents, poems and correspondence to reveal a woman whose passion for the life of the mind was nourished by her love of the world.

“I modeled the book after Hannah Arendt’s essay on Walter Benjamin that she wrote; which was published as a standalone essay in The New Yorker and was published as the introduction to Illuminations; which is the first collected volume of Walter Benjamin’s works to appear in English — works that Hannah Arendt herself carried by hand from Europe to New York City.” — Samantha Rose Hill

Hill was joined by D.N. Rodowick, who discussed his most recent work, An Education in Judgment: Hannah Arendt and the Humanities. Alice McCrum, Programs Manager at the American Library in Paris, guided the discussion with a series of questions covering topics including the major events and individuals in Arendt’s life that shaped her as a writer; Rose Hill’s different approach for this new Arendt biography; the gap in writings on Arendt’s account of judgment from the perspective of aesthetics or culture; and Arendt’s resurgence in popularity during the Trump administration. Questions from the audience included how Arendt deals with the idea of fact, and if Arendt has come up during this time of Putin’s rise and the invasion of Ukraine. McCrum concluded the event by asking who Arendt might point to as the best thinker in our present day.

“Samantha’s book will give you the best overview you can find right now…about how Hannah Arendt’s life and her thought are so intimately connected.” — D.N. Rodowick

The book has been reviewed in the London Review of Books, New York Review of Books, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Wall Street Journal, The Marx and Philosophy Review of Books, Women’s Review of Books, and Metascience. It has also received coverage in Spiked, Guernica Magazine, Literary Hub, and Prospect Magazine.