I love this book. I haven't read all of it yet, but the subject list in the table of contents is very enticing (and more extensive than I expected). From what I have read, the authors take important ideological controversies of today and, in few words, portray them in ways that get to the heart of the matter: what these ideas actually _mean_ to people, and what their likely ramifications are in the larger sociological context. You might suspect that, in order to do this, they vacuously gloss over key elements or important details of the subject matters, but from what I've seen this is not at all true: if anything, their keenness in recapping the issues offers refreshing overall perspectives that could save *hours* (or days) of research just trying to see the forest for all the trees. It's written by some of the most prominent thinkers alive today, I don't feel they abscond from a fair analysis.



What really struck me about this book is that the authors go out and do what few of the most fervent protagonists and antagonists of the respective ideas seem ever to bother themselves with, which is to truly think about or explain what their ideas mean in the bigger picture. In chess, you simply follow the rules of the game and see who wins - why the player want to win is their own business. In world-changing ideas it's not so simple: there are more important consequences than just "being right," and why one is so angrily (or happily) for or against an ideology also outlines their probable biases and blindspots in their evaluation of The Truth (where there even is such a thing). Anyone interested in philosophy for reasons that pertain to the actual world at large should read this book, IMO.

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