Discipline and Punish vs The Origins of Totalitarianism: Which Should You Read?

Discipline and Punish Michel Foucault · 1975 ★★★★☆ 4.1 333 pages · ≈ 6 h 10 m · Challenging

“On 2 March 1757 Damiens the regicide condemmed 'to make the amende honorable before the main door of the Church of Paris', where he was to be 'taken and conveyed in a cart, wearing nothing but a a shirt, holding a torch of burning wax weighing two pounds'; then, 'in the said cart, to the place de Greve, where, on a scaffold that will be erected there, the flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms,”

English version of "Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison"

The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt · 1951 ★★★★☆ 4.3 550 pages · ≈ 10 h 11 m · Challenging

“acteristic of these times, when Jewish individuals and the first small wealthy Jewish communities were more powerful than at any time in the nineteenth century, was the frankness with which their privileged status and their right to it was discussed, and the careful testimony of the authorities to the importance of their services to the state. There was not the slightest doubt or ambiguity about t”

Hannah Arendt's definitive work on totalitarianism and an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political history The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and…