Ancients and the Moderns: Rethinking Modernity

Rosen's book has the rare quality of being playful and provokative, while also invoking the impression that it rests on very solid scholarship. The book reads as a polemic, but would nevertheless easily defend a place in any academic course on political philosophy or cultural cricism. Most fascinating is the way in which the author makes the whole history of western thought come together, while simultaneously securing a consciousness of the gaps and differences comprised in it. The sweep is wonderful and the points often surgically precise. There is a singular author at work here, one that I belive no one will regret the time spent reading.