In this book, Arendt sets out to portray the embodiment of humanity's resilience during modernity's darkest times. In doing so, she analyzes various thinkers, revolutionaries, polemicists, critics, playwrites, and authors in essays distinguished in their biographic-philosophical nature. From Isak Denison to Bertolt Brecht, Arendt weaves out and identifies the unique qualities and intensities these individuals possessed for the sake of their conviction to life and pursuit of reality. A must read for anyone attempting to better understand the crises of meaning that occurred around and well into the turn of the twentieth century of Western Europe.