Hannah Arendt and the Pentagon Papers

On a recent trip to the Hannah Arendt Collection at Bard College, we came across this particular section of Arendt's library:

Clearly discerned in the center of the image is a four-volume set of The Pentagon Papers, a collection of documents uncovered by Daniel Ellsberg that recounted how the United States government had, among other things, deliberately enlarged the scope of the Vietnam War. A complete archive of the Pentagon Papers is available online here.

A number of other books are also clearly visible, including Papers on the War, in which Ellsberg recounts the events surrounding his release of The Pentagon Papers to the American public; An American Dilemma, a book written by Gunnar Myrdal and Sissela Bok which exposes the contradiction of American democracy when set against racial discrimination in the 1940s; and Of Them Which Say They Are Jews, one of Horace M. Kallen's many essays on the Jewish struggle for survival in modern times.

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The Hannah Arendt Collection at Bard College is maintained by staff members at the Bard College Stevenson Library. To peruse the collection's digital entries, please click here.

For more Library photos, please click here.