We Are Free to Change the World
A bold exploration of the life and work of one of the world’s most influential – and controversial – thinkers, which brings Arendt’s ideas into urgent dialogue with our troubled present.
‘A rare gem’ SHAMI CHAKRABARTI
'An absorbing new biography... Admirable' ECONOMIST
'Invigorating and insightful' FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Exhilarating, brilliant and utterly original’ PHILIPPE SANDS
Hannah Arendt wrote about power and terror, exile and love, and above all about freedom. In place of the forces of darkness and tyranny, she pitched a politics of plurality, spontaneity and defiance. Loving the world, Arendt taught, meant finding the courage to protect it.
Written with passion and authority, We Are Free to Change the World calls on each of us to think our way, as Arendt did – unflinchingly, lovingly, and defiantly – through our own unpredictable times.
Lyndsey Stonebridge FBA is Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is the author of We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience (2024); Placeless People: Writing, Rights, and Refugees (2018); winner of the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize and a Choice Outstanding Academic Title; The Judicial Imagination: Writing After Nuremberg, which won the British Academy Rose Mary Crawshay Prize for English Literature; and the essay collection, Writing and Righting: Literature in the Age of Human Rights. She is a regular media commentator and broadcaster, and lives in London.
www.lyndseystonebridge.com