much of the historical analysis is brilliant, but at least as much of the material is overwhelmed by arendts racism, elitism, and chauvinism. her conceptualization of the mob, movement, state, and racism r all particularly weak and often ahistorical or nonsensical ( )

Le Monde placed the book among the 100 best books of any kind of the 20th century, while the National Review ranked it #15 on its list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the century.[3] The Intercollegiate Studies Institute listed it among the 50 best non-fiction books of the century.[4] The book made a major impact on Norman Podhoretz, who compared the pleasure of reading it to that of reading a great poem or novel.[5] The book sold out on Amazon in January 2017, as part of a bump in interest in books about totalitarianism around the inauguration of President Donald Trump.[6]

The book has also attracted criticism. The most comprehensive may have been in the Times Literary Supplement in 2009 by University of Chicago professor Bernard Wasserstein.[7] Wasserstein cited Arendt's systematic internalization of the various anti-Semitic and Nazi sources and books she was familiar with, which led to the use of many of these sources as authorities in the book.[8]