Hannah Arendt: Key Concepts

Having purchased several other volumes from the Key Concepts series (Habermas, Foucault, Sartre) I was pleased to get my hands on this new addition to the mix. The book does not disappoint. Unlike the previous reviewer, it is very clear that this book--as well as all the other volumes in the series--are not meant to be dictionaries. It provides a comprehensive and clear grounding in many of the representative major ideas of Arendt's work, and nicely complements other commentaries on Arendt (although it is probably more accessible than the books of, say, Benhabib and Villa, to those new to Arendt). Although fairly compact the book covers a lot of ground, the essays are well-written and concise, and, especially for the price, it is a great place to start (and even return). Highly recommended.

Indeed, I was anxiously waiting for a HA proper dictionary and, alas, what I received instead was a collection of essays dealing with some of the major topics in the work of HA (which also means that not all of the major concepts are treated in these essays). Being, in turn, a collection of essays, this work is in some sense quite redundant, for there are quite a few good collections of papers on HA around.And while I have not read any of the essays (for I have just received the book), another thing that bothered me was that none of the scholars present are top-notch HA scholars (Benhabib, Villa etc.), as good as they may be. In sum, I believe the title of this work is misleading, and as such I will keep on waiting for a proper HA dictionary, and not just another collection of essays.