Books like The Open Society and Its Enemies (1+2) by Karl Popper

Book digitized by Google from the library of the New York Public Library and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.

**Hannah Arendt's definitive work on totalitarianism and an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political history** The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I. Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in her time—Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia—which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.

Presents an analysis of what justice is, the transcendental theory of justice and its drawbacks, and a persuasive argument for a comparative perspective on justice that can guide us in the choice between alternatives.