No thesis statements, just vibes.

This was a really unique philosophy text: it was Arendt covering Adolf Eichmann’s Nazi war crimes trial in Israel for The New Yorker in 1961. It was grounded, impactful, and percipient—and contains one of the most important insights of our time: that ‘monsters’ aren’t the biggest baddies.

Eichmann was quoted as saying: "I will leap into my grave laughing because the feeling that I have 5 million human beings on my conscience is for me a source of extraordinary satisfaction.” 😬 yeah…

So when he was put on trial, everyone expected a sadist, a psycho, and a raging anti-Semite—a monster. And they expected it so much that that’s the report that was widely circulated at the time.

Except he wasn’t. And Arendt focused instead on how normal, average, even decent (!) he was—with so much detail from the trial and other facts about the “Final Solution” that this book was chillingly unputdownable.

And it marked a shift in her philosophical thinking. From investigating total evil to her famous concept of the “banality of evil.” 

Because what does it say about the power of totalitarian ideology when the biggest baddies of all time are… just normal guys?

Also the audiobook is really good.