It's taken me a while to get to the concluding volume in this series, but it was well worth it: the best of the lot. Arendt is at her most readable when she's talking about people instead of theory, and Totalitarianism is, at its heart, a book about people. About how they can be made into murderers, about how they can be made into victims, about how they can be convinced to live in a state where they could be either at any moment. It's terrifying reading, really, plotting out point by point how secret police and concentration camps and getting whole communities to conspire together in literal fictions combine to form a society of utter ruthlessness, and utter shapelessness.

Really, although I have the collected work in front of me I'm glad I read it in the three separate parts. The concluding volume, at least, should be compulsory reading for all, because it's hard not to read the manipulations of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia and see their small counterparts today. Absolutely chilling.