History · Similar reads
Books like The Origins of Totalitarianism
The best books like The Origins of Totalitarianism are Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Man's Search for Meaning, and Guns, Germs, and Steel. The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt is about totalitarianism, political philosophy, antisemitism. If that's what drew you in, here are 12 books that share its DNA — each summarized on Superbook, and ready to chat with in the app.
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari · History
Sapiens traces the full arc of human history from the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa roughly 70,000 years ago to the present.
A kindred history read.
Read the summary → - Man's Search for Meaning
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Viktor E. Frankl · Psychology
Man's Search for Meaning is Viktor Frankl's account of his years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and the psychological theory he developed from that experience.
A kindred history read.
Read the summary → - Guns, Germs, and Steel
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Jared Diamond · Science
Guns, Germs, and Steel is Jared Diamond's attempt to answer a question posed to him by a Papua New Guinean politician named Yali: why did Europeans end up with so much cargo — wealth, technology, power — while other peoples had comparatively little?
A kindred history read.
Read the summary →
- Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
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Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
Timothy Snyder · History
Bloodlands is Timothy Snyder's account of the territories between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union — principally Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states — where the two regimes' violence overlapped between 1933 and 1945.
Both dig into totalitarianism.
Read the summary → - Gulag: A History
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Anne Applebaum · History
Anne Applebaum's Gulag is the first comprehensive English-language history of the Soviet forced labor camp system, drawing on KGB archives opened briefly after 1991, survivor memoirs, and interviews with former prisoners and guards.
Both dig into totalitarianism.
Read the summary → - Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
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Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen · History
Hitler's Willing Executioners is Daniel Goldhagen's argument that the Holocaust was made possible by a specifically German form of antisemitism — what he calls "eliminationist antisemitism" — that was so deeply embedded in German culture by the twentieth century that ordinary Germans participated in the genocide willingly, not reluctantly, and often with evident enthusiasm.
Both dig into antisemitism.
Read the summary → - Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944–1956
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Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944–1956
Anne Applebaum · History
Iron Curtain is Anne Applebaum's account of how the Soviet Union destroyed civil society and imposed communist rule across Eastern Europe between 1944 and 1956.
Both dig into totalitarianism.
Read the summary → - The Captive Mind
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Czesław Miłosz · History
The Captive Mind is Czesław Miłosz's study of how intellectuals living under Soviet-imposed communism in postwar Eastern Europe came to accommodate, justify, and eventually internalize the ideology they had initially resisted.
Both dig into totalitarianism.
Read the summary → - The End of History and the Last Man
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The End of History and the Last Man
Francis Fukuyama · History
Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man was published in 1992, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the apparent triumph of liberal democracy as the world's dominant political model.
Both dig into political philosophy.
Read the summary → - The Gulag Archipelago
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · History
The Gulag Archipelago is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's monumental account of the Soviet forced-labor camp system.
Both dig into totalitarianism.
Read the summary → - The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
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The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
William L. Shirer · History
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is William Shirer's comprehensive account of Nazi Germany from the early career of Adolf Hitler through the defeat of the Reich in 1945.
Both dig into totalitarianism.
Read the summary → - 1984
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George Orwell · Philosophy
Nineteen Eighty-Four is George Orwell's 1949 novel about a future England called Airstrip One, governed by the totalitarian Party under the figurehead Big Brother.
Both dig into totalitarianism.
Read the summary →
Books like The Origins of Totalitarianism: quick answers
What are the best books like The Origins of Totalitarianism?
The best books like The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt are Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder, Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with The Origins of Totalitarianism, such as totalitarianism, political philosophy, antisemitism.
What should I read after The Origins of Totalitarianism?
A natural next read after The Origins of Totalitarianism is Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. A kindred history read. Other strong choices are Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder.
What books are similar to The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt?
The Origins of Totalitarianism centers on totalitarianism, political philosophy, antisemitism. Books with a similar feel include Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder, Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
