Jacob L. Talmon was educated in Poland, Israel and France. He is the author of The origins of Totalitarian Democracy and Political Messianism. At the time of his death in 1980 he was professor of Modern History at Hebrew university, and was spending his sabbatical year at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. Irving Louis Horowitz (Introduction) is Hannah Arendt Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Sociology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.