Between Friends

Mary McCarthy, the prominent American writer, and political philosopher Hannah Arendt, who had fled from Nazi Germany, first met in New York. They soon became friends and began a remarkable 25-year exchange of letters, here reproduced in its entirety. Mary McCarthy was an ardent correspondent, whose letters served her autobiographical impulse and her delight in writing as a means of ordering experience. Hannah Arendt's letters bring her tender voice and keen intelligence to life on the page. Even as they traded ideas about politics, literature and morality, they also shared personal advice and delightful gossip.