“Each [essay is] a model of clarity, weight, gravity . . . each superbly centered on the moods, manners, works . . . of ten exemplary men and women” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

“Dark times” is Brecht's phrase, and Hannah Arendt uses it suggest that those she writes about are not “mouthpieces of the Zeitgeist”, but, rather, that the routine repetitive horrors of the twentieth century form the substance of the dark against which their lives of illumination were lived. Containing essays from Dr. Arendt on Karl Jaspers, Rosa Luxemburg, Pope John XXIII, Isak Dinesen, Bertolt Brecht, Randall Jarrell, and others whose lives and work shed light on the early part of the century.