“The not so hidden intent of a new German biography, Thomas Meyer’s Hannah Arendt: A Life of the Mind, is to reclaim her as a German woman, writer, thinker, and publishing and academic phenomenon, not just an American one. Meyer, who teaches philosophy at the University of Munich and is a widely published writer, has assembled an enormous amount of information about Arendt’s family, education, German publishing career, and postwar celebrity. . . . Arendt comes most fully alive, though, when Meyer lets her own extravagant, commanding voice carry the story forward. . . . Meyer’s archival diligence enlarges the record of Arendt’s life.” —The New Yorker
“Thomas Meyer’s Hannah Arendt: A Life of the Mind returns her thought to a world in which a few words on a form could decide a life. Expertly translated from the German by Shelley Frisch, the book is the first full-scale Arendt biography since Elisabeth Young-Bruehl’s 1982 account. . . . Mr. Meyer draws on later correspondence, archives, unpublished writings and his experience editing a 12-volume German edition of Arendt’s work. His archival discoveries change the shape of her story. . . . he produces a fresh Arendt: less a lone intelligence surveying the 20th century’s catastrophes from above than a participant in its battered institutions. . . . The life Mr. Meyer reconstructs reads as a sustained revolt against the power of categories to diminish. He shows her ideas taking shape at desks where classifications opened or foreclosed futures, within organizations charged with apportioning the remnants of an inheritance among the living. Seen against that history, her arguments no longer seem to descend from the altitude of solitary thought. They bear the abrasion of files handled, claims contested and Jewish allegiance translated from words into work.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Philosophy professor Thomas Meyer’s fresh and comprehensive biography was catalyzed by his access to the complete Arendt archives and commanding fluency in her erudite writings. He nests each phase in Arendt’s life and work within a meticulously detailed social, cultural, and political context . . . Arendt’s incisive and courageous work remains urgently relevant, and Meyer’s epic biography profoundly deepens our appreciation for the power of her vision.” —Booklist (starred review)
“In this biography, Meyer aims to evaluate ‘previously unknown archival material and other documents that have been overlooked’ and treats readers to a dizzying array of details that piece together Arendt’s storied life. Every contact in her network is rigorously fleshed out with a modicum of well-researched background info . . . Impressive.” —Kirkus
“Just as Arendt is a thinker who turns away from concepts and abstractions to look honestly at the world, Meyer sounds the trumpets: Turn away from the unconfirmed stories and dive back into the reality of the archives! . . . The focus is on what was heretofore unknown. And there is much to be found. . . . The result is a biography that is indispensable as a correction.” —National Review
“Hannah Arendt, one of the most vital philosophers of the twentieth century, gets the vital biography she has long deserved in Thomas Meyer’s Hannah Arendt. Deeply researched and smartly written, this is an important history that, like Arendt’s own work, is all but certain to stand the test of time.” —Jonathan Eig, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for King: A Life
“It’s a real challenge to write a new biography of such a well-known character, much less such an indispensable one. But Thomas Meyer amply succeeds with this monumental portrait of Hannah Arendt. Here is Arendt as we’ve never seen her before, full of questions and wonder at a world as cruel as it is captivating. In Meyer’s deeply researched and measured account, the iconic thinker is, at long last, neither saint nor villain; she is finally human, contradictions and all.” —James McAuley, author of The House of Fragile Things and The Shadow and the Flame
“Thomas Meyer, the general editor of a German edition of Hannah Arendt’s works, has written a biography of his subject that rests on extensive archival work. Splendidly translated by Shelley Frisch, the book offers us a complex picture of this political philosopher that contributes richly to our knowledge of Arendt’s life. In particular, Meyer offers new and important details about her years in France after her escape from Berlin in 1933 and her arrival in the United States in 1941. No person interested in Arendt’s work should miss this book.” —Liliane Weissberg, editor of the critical edition of Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess by Hannah Arendt
“Thomas Meyer is a scintillating student of the lives of 20th century intellectuals. Here he tackles one of its finest with unparalleled grace, finesse, and revelation.” —Darrin McMahon, author of Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea
“This thoroughly documented yet elegantly written and deftly translated biography of Hannah Arendt would have pleased its subject to no end. Not because it is hagiographic but because it respects the limits of archival research and allows its subject to remain elusive. Meyer creates a series of encounters with Arendt in contexts that were not well known until now, including her vigorous activities on behalf of Jewish child refugees during her Paris years and her early American years, before she became a media star. Meyer moves us beyond the hackneyed verities about Arendt and gives us a portrait of a woman who was not afraid to take risks in life and in what she wrote.” —Michael Zank, author of Jerusalem: A Brief History
“In Hannah Arendt: A Life of the Mind (translated by Shelley Frisch), Thomas Meyer draws on newly discovered archival materials to fashion a meticulous tribute to Arendt’s intellectual passion and to the personal courage of such a trailblazing, free-spirited woman.” —The Independent (UK)
“In Hannah Arendt: A Life of the Mind, the German philosopher Thomas Meyer clearly did some heroic work in the archives. . . . A worthy project.” —The New York Times
“Thomas Meyer is rather well qualified to rescue Arendt from her latter-day devotees. . . . his biography now appears in Shelley Frisch’s pleasantly idiomatic English translation. Meyer, the editor of a 12-volume German edition of Arendt’s writings, has commendably restored Arendt to the vanished worlds that made her. . . . He replaces the familiar legend of Arendt as an implausibly precocious prodigy . . . with the more persuasive portrait of a woman shaped by the cultivated, prosperous milieu of the German-Jewish bourgeoisie.” —The Times (UK)
International Praise:
“The publications on Arendt seem truly countless, and yet Thomas Meyer manages to view her life from a new perspective. Meyer completely changes the viewpoint on Arendt, not looking at her from today’s perspective, but attempting to reconstruct her life using contemporary documents and reports.” —nd. The day online
“Meyer wants to portray Arendt ‘in her time’. And so this first genuine biography, based on primary sources, is not only a stroke of luck and a pleasure to read 40 years after Elisabeth Young-Bruehl’s last attempt at an approximation, because of its wealth of material, but also because a new picture of Arendt’s theory can be drawn based on new or previously overlooked documents from her Paris years.” —Time Literature
“At this point, Meyer’s biography is not only historically but also politically important, because it brings together new source findings to prove that Arendt was not only a Zionist, but also an ‘activist’ for the emigration of German Jews to Palestine in the prehistory of the Jewish state.” —Welt am Sonntag
“What makes the book by Munich philosophy professor Thomas Meyer so worth reading are the insights from previously unused sources.” —Southwest Press
“The form, which tends to be formless, nevertheless follows a certain methodological rigor. For, as Walter Benjamin envisioned for his Arcades Project, Meyer primarily lets the documents themselves speak. Drawing on a seemingly endless wealth of knowledge, he comments, traces cross-connections with detective-like genius, and assembles them.” —Süddeutsche Zeitung
