Includes bibliographical references (p. [188]-215) and index.

1. Introduction -- 2. Violence and power, politics and war -- 3. Who is revealed in war? : history, war, and storytelling -- 4. The boomerang effect : on the imperial origins of total war -- 5. 'How dangerous it can be to be innocent' : war and the law -- 6. Rage against hypocrisy : on liberal wars for human rights -- 7. Beyond Strauss, lies and the war in Iraq : a critique of neoconservativism -- 8. The humanitarian condition? : on war and making a global public.

"This is the first book length study of war in the thought of one of the twentieth-century's most important and original political thinkers. Hannah Arendt's writing was fundamentally rooted in her understanding of war and its political significance. But this element of her work has surprisingly been neglected in international and political theory. This book fills a gap by assessing the full range of Arendt's historical and conceptual writing on war and introduces to international theory the distinct language she used to talk about war and the political world. It builds on her re-thinking of old concepts such as power, violence, greatness, world, imperialism, evil, hypocrisy and humanity and introduces some that are new to international thought like plurality, action, agonism, natality and political immortality. This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War." -- Book jacket.