Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963)

Hannah Arendt reported on the trial of Adolf Eichmann for The New Yorker, and this 1963 book gave the world the phrase "the banality of evil." She did not mean that his actions were ordinary; she meant that the man in the dock seemed driven less by fanatical hatred than by complacency. Read it as a brilliant, combative essay rather than settled history. Its claim that Jewish leaders almost without exception cooperated with the Nazis caused lasting anger, and Bettina Stangneth's Eichmann Before Jerusalem later argued that he was an insidious antisemite all along. That argument is exactly why it is worth reading once you have a history such as Ordinary Men behind you.