This bold new take on the life and ideas of political philosopher Hannah Arendt explores her lessons for living in an age of uncertainty.

'Compelling and original' OBSERVER

'Invigorating and insightful' FINANCIAL TIMES

Born in the first decade of the last century, Hannah Arendt escaped fascist Europe to make a new life for herself in America, where she became one of the world's most influential - and controversial - public intellectuals.

She wrote about power and terror, exile and love, and above all about freedom. Questioning was her first defence against tyranny. In place of the forces of darkness and insanity, 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, Lyndsey Stonebridge's We Are Free to Change the World illuminates Arendt's life and work and its urgent dialogue with our troubled present. It calls on each of us to think our way, as Hannah Arendt did - unflinchingly, lovingly, and defiantly - through our own unpredictable times.

"Compelling and original" - Observer

"Invigorating and insightful… An exhilarating and thoroughly humanising portrait of one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century… With impressive clarity and infectious passion, she follows the currents of Arendt’s thought to a rousing conclusion" - Financial Times

"Erudite and passionate... A superb read" - The Marginalian

"From Arendt’s life and work Stonebridge fashions a map for navigating our present-day struggles and concerns" - Times Literary Supplement

"An absorbing new biography… Stonebridge does an admirable job… She imagines her way into Arendt’s life, in places literally retracing her subject’s footsteps, sensing the climate and smelling the (typically smoke-filled) air in an effort of understanding" - Economist

"A timely and magisterial biography… A critically important overview of Arendt’s life and thought" - Irish Times

"This is a book filled with luminous insights not just into Hannah Arendt but into the moral challenges of our times" - Jewish Chronicle

"Scintillating and always bracing... A gripping book.… presenting us with a Hannah Arendt who is all too human" - Literary Review

"A splendid, ever-so-timely consideration of Arendt and her thoughts on how nations sink into tyranny" - Kirkus, *Starred Review*

"Arendt teaches us here, there is power in our capacity to love… In We Are Free to Change the World, Stonebridge paints a tender picture of Arendt as a person not just a brilliant mind… I think you have to know what love is, too, to write a biography as beautiful and intimate, if not flawless, as this one" - Theos Think Tank