Spectrum - by Perry Anderson (Paperback)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

The focus of Spectrum is the range of contemporary ideas that runs from conservative to liberal to radical conceptions of state and society, rarely considered in the same optic. It looks at the theories of major minds of the twentieth-century Right, including Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss and Friedrich von Hayek; liberal philosophers such as John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas and Norberto Bobbio; and significant figures in the culture of the Left: the historians Edward Thompson, Robert Brenner and Eric Hobsbawm; the classicist Sebastiano Timpanaro; the sociologist Goran Therborn; the novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The book concludes with some comparative observations on the two leading intellectual periodicals of the UK and USA, the London Review of Books and New York Review of Books; and a piece of family history.

Review Quotes

"Sheer pleasure--one of the best political, historical and literary essayists of the age."--Times Literary Supplement

"Dazzling and unyielding--Anderson remains an inspiring example of thinking in the world, about the world and for the world."--The Nation

"The most polymathic, and the most profound, essayist currently wielding a pen."--Atlantic Monthly

About the Author

Perry Anderson is the author of, among other books, Spectrum, Lineages of the Absolutist State, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, Considerations on Western Marxism, English Questions, The Origins of Postmodernity, and The New Old World. He teaches history at UCLA and is on the editorial board of New Left Review.