Hanna Arendt escaped a short period of Nazi captivity to work for refugees in Paris until Paris fell. After finding her way to the U.S.A. she taught generations of students at the New School for Social Research in New York City.

She worked hard to express for us her understanding of what was novel about the crimes that characterized the late 20th Century. Her phrase “the banality of evil” is more than a soundbite. She formulated notions of the nature of power, of action, of promise, of thinking—each one a crystallization around an arc of creative writing that has no peer. We are her legacy, as democratic citizens finding our way through a world gone mad.

What’s going on in San Francisco even as the APEC conference takes place? Talks like this, in the voice of one who thinks out loud.

Walker Brents III talks, every month (with a summer break for traveling the highways of the American West), on topics diverse, knotty and crystalline… you’ll find them on the Bird & Beckett livestream, but are also welcome to come and listen in the half-light of the shop.