Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". A highly serious and commanding study, written not only knowledgeably but eloquently.Īn extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. And under totalitarianism, where imperialism and anti-semitism reached its fullest expression, she shows the rise of the masses and the breakdown of protective class walls, the use of propaganda for the furtherance of power, the destruction of morality and individuality. She analyzes imperialism, and its central idea-expansion the use of race-thinking as a ruling device on the dark continents the decline of the nation-state and the increase of the minorities after 1918. Arendt traces the decline of European Jewry and their persecution as a powerless group under Hitler back to the preparatory causes and the rise of anti-semitism, follows their ascendant and falling social prestige through the 19th century.
A tri-partite study of anti-semitism (not merely the hatred of the Jews), imperialism (not merely conquest) and totalitarianism (not merely dictatorship) which examines political, social and historical forces with an impressive scholarship.
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