Distinctive Books in Jewish Thought is a new and rapidly growing collecting area comprising books that evince a significant or unique contribution to the long archive of Jewish thought as it developed across the globe and through millenia. Notable authors include Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno; Hannah Arendt; Martin Buber; and Moses Mendelssohn.
This collecting area for rare books is a subset of the Robert Lindsay Tate Collection for Jewish Studies, which includes over 5,000 books. Alice Tate donated books from the personal collection of her father, Robert Lindsay Tate to start this collection. She also made a financial donation, which enables the library to purchase new materials selected by the Isaac Swift Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies.
This page features a few highlights from Distinctive Books in Jewish Thought.
Hannah Arendt. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951. JC481 .A6 1951
This rare first edition of Hannah Arendt's widely influential book features an entirely different conclusion than the one found in contemporary copies.
Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. Philosophische Fragmente, New York: Institute for Social Research, 1944 G44 ; B3279.H8473 P5 1944
Forged in the crucible of Europe unweaving itself between two world wars, critical theory emerged with the so-called Frankfurt School at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany. This book was a publication of the newly reconstituted Institute after its move to Columbia University as its members fled Nazism, and it eventually became the pathbreaking and hugely influential work, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947). One of only three hundred copies printed, it bears the colophon, "Mimeographed by Herbert Herz, Hollywood, California."
