Desolation and Enlightenment: Political Knowledge After Total War, Totalitarianism, and the Holocaust

In this major intellectual history, Ira Katznelson examines the works of Hannah Arendt, Robert Dahl, Richard Hofstadter, Karl Polanyi, and others. In light of their epoch’s calamities, these intellectuals insisted that the tradition of Enlightenment thought required a new realism, a good deal of renovation, and much recommitment.