Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was University Professor of political philosophy in the graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, a visiting professor at several universities including California, Princeton, Columbia, and Chicago, a research director of the Conference on Jewish Relations, the chief editor of Schocken Books, and the executive director of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction in New York City. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1952, and an Arts and Letters Grant of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1954. She is also the author of
On Revolution and
Between Past and Future, which are available from Penguin Classics along with
The Portable Hannah Arendt.
Amos Elon (1926-2009) was born in Vienna, Austria, and spent most of his adult life in Jerusalem. A frequent essayist, lecture, and critic who was well known for his articles in
The New Yorker and
The New York Review of Books, he is the author of such bestselling works as
The Israelis,
Flight into Egypt, Founder, Herzel, and
The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch.