It featured previously unused primary source material, including Eichmann's reports and speeches dating from 1937 in which he describes his beliefs in a Jewish conspiracy.
[6][7] Cesarani argues that Arendt's account of the Eichmann trial was hindered by her prejudice towards the Eastern European Jewish background of the prosecutor, Gideon Hausner.
[7] British historian Ian Kershaw wrote in his Daily Telegraph that he commended Cesarani's "expert guidance through the web of lies, deceit, and contradictions built into Eichmann's various tendentious accounts of his life and career".
Kershaw says that Cesarani's "revision of Arendt's interpretation is surely correct" in arguing that "Eichmann was a convinced anti-Semitic ideologue in a key position where he himself could initiate action and make things happen" rather than a bureaucrat accepting orders.
The two agree on many factual details regarding Eichmann's rise in the Nazi ranks through 1941, but disagree about the psychological factors in play, which Gewen does not wish to sort out.
He further said that "Cesarani believes his details add up to a portrait at odds with Arendt's banal bureaucrat, but what is striking is how far his research goes to reinforce her fundamental arguments."
[13] An only child, he won a scholarship to Latymer Upper School in west London and went to Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1976, where he gained a first in history.
A master's degree in Jewish history at Columbia University, New York, working with the scholar of Judaism Arthur Hertzberg, shaped the rest of his career.
He spent the week before his operation checking the footnotes for his final book at the Institute of Historical Research in London, and he was still writing ten days before his death.