Picasso, told that his portrait of Gertrude Stein didn't resemble the lady at all, is said to have retorted: “It will!” After half a century of debate, a similar retort might be leveled at dismissive critics of Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Though it must now be conceded that some of Arendt's claims were wrong, Eichmann's afterlife in public memory remains decisively shaped by her portrait. Since the book's publication in 1963, every significant discussion of Eichmann, much of the scholarship on the Shoah, or Holocaust and some of the best writing on genocide remains anchored in dialogue with Arendt. In fact, her Report on the Jerusalem trial of Adolf Eichmann (lieutenant- colonel in the Gestapo, and chief administrator of Nazi genocidal policy) has long upstaged public interest in the man and his trial. Lending itself to changing interpretations, Arendt's book has taken root in popular culture: film, fiction and journalism are replete with references to its subtitle. And it continues to inspire writing across a full spectrum of intellectual disciplines, including social sciences, about which Arendt expressed reservations (Baehr 2010b).

What explains the longevity and generativity of this work? Eichmann in Jerusalem owes its vitality not only to its strengths, but also to its flaws – as social science, though not as narrative. Arendt's philosophical education led her to seek a story of universal – even metaphysical – significance in a unique event. Her Report on the Banality of Evil has qualities of a fictional masterpiece: emotionally gripping tone; portrait of one individual offered as representative of a social “type” or even a personification of a metaphysical principle; moral drama of the triumph of evil, simultaneously scaled to an individual career and to collective historical action set against a vast geographical landscape. Finally, there is the “catch” of a subtitle that nests extraordinary horror in the quotidian. Originally written without footnotes or professional jargon for The New Yorker, Arendt's piece quickly secured a place in the discourses of specialist scholarship (history, law, psychoanalysis, political science, criminology, psychology, sociology). But imperatives of good storytelling may oppose those of sound social science, luring a master storyteller into theoretical dead ends. The very narrative strengths that secured Eichmann in Jerusalem a permanent place in social science discourse are also responsible for its weaknesses as social science.