Perry Anderson, eminent historian of the New Left, assesses the competing claims of rival intellectual groupings from the far right, the liberal centre and the Marxist left.

This long-awaited volume, previously announced as Figures in the Forest, offers a critical survey of the ideas of key conservative, liberal and socialist thinkers, rarely considered in the same optic.

The book opens with a comparative examination of four remarkable minds of the radical right: Michael Oakeshott, Friedrich Hayek, Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt, and the theoretical and biographical parallels between their conceptions of liberty. In the liberal and social-democratic centre, it looks at John Rawls’s concepts of consensus and international law, and the trajectory of Norberto Bobbio. On the Marxist left, it assesses the work of three major historians: Edward Thompson, Robert Brenner and Eric Hobsbawm, and a great philologist, Sebastiano Timpanaro. Each is considered against the historical background—institutional as well as intellectual—that set the context of their ideas. Also considered is the impact of the most widely read periodicals that deal with ideas today, the Times Literary Supplement, New York Review of Books and London Review of Books.

“The chief impression … is one of extraordinary intellectual power. The analysis of the theoretical and empirical claims made in the work of its subjects is both dazzling and unyielding … Anderson remains an inspiring example of thinking in the world, about the world and for the world.” — Stefan Collini, The Nation

Praise for Perry Anderson:

“The breath-taking range of conception and the architectural skill with which it has been executed make his work a formidable intellectual achievement.” – New York Review of Books

“A powerful and lucid intelligence.” – Eric Hobsbawm, New Statesman

Perry Anderson is the author of Lineages of the Absolutist State, Considerations on Western Marxism, Arguments in English Marxism, In the Tracks of Historical Materialism, A Zone of Engagement and The Origins of Postmodernity; he teaches history at UCLA, and serves on the editorial board of New Left Review.

416 pages

Cloth
ISBN-10: 1 85984 527 4
£25 / US$35 / CAN$45

Paper
ISBN-13: 978 1 84467 135 9
£14.99 / US$24.95 / CAN$31