Le Monde placed the book among the 100 best books of any kind of the 20th century, and the National Review ranked it #15 on its list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the century.[21] The Intercollegiate Studies Institute listed it among the 50 best non-fiction books of the century.[22] The book made a major impact on Norman Podhoretz, who compared the pleasure of reading it to that of reading a great poem or novel.[23]
The book has also attracted criticism, among them a piece in the Times Literary Supplement in 2009 by University of Chicago Professor Bernard Wasserstein.[24] Wasserstein cited Arendt's systematic internalization of the various anti-Semitic and Nazi sources and books she was familiar with, which led to the use of many of these sources as authorities in the book.[25] On the other hand, Gershom Scholem criticized Eichmann in Jerusalem but still praised the Origins of Totalitarianism.[26] In several other places, Scholem mentions that he learned from Ernst Bloch[27] that much Jewish literature and testimony in respect of some historical periods is not available due to pogroms, leaving antisemitic sources as the only surviving references for those periods.[28]
The historian Emmanuelle Saada disputes Arendt's work and the general scholarly consensus that the rise of scientific racism directly correlates with the rise of colonialist imperialism. Saada contests that there is little evidence to support that ideas like those of Arthur de Gobineau, whom Arendt explicitly mentions, hold an important place in the scientific justification of European colonialism. Saada asserts that Arendt overemphasizes the role of scientific racism in forming modern totalitarianism, but in reality, Arendt should attribute blame to the "bureaucratic racism" she discusses elsewhere in the text.[29]
Such scholars as Jürgen Habermas have supported Arendt in her 20th-century criticism of totalitarian readings of Marxism. That commentary on Marxism has indicated concerns with the limits of totalitarian perspectives often associated with Marx's apparent over-estimation of the emancipatory potential of the forces of production. Habermas extends that critique in his writings on functional reductionism in the life-world in his Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason.[30]
Historian John Lukacs was highly critical calling it a "flawed and dishonest book" with "unhistorical and shrilly verbose" and that Arendt coverage of the Soviet Union was superficial. [31] [32]
