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History of the idea of utopia within (mostly German) leftist thought, from the early socialists to Habermas etc. The focus on German thinkers is justified because the book's target audience is the German Left. I would have liked more connection to political praxis. The intro and the outro reference praxis, but the rest of the book stays within the realm of theory. It's not super fun to read, but pretty good and educative.

I read this little book hoping to patch up my general knowledge about Judaism, and I feel like my expectations have been met. The larger half of the book is a history of Judaism. It does its job quite well and is reasonably well written. The second, shorter half is concerned with religious practice, this part is a little less entertaining, a little more chaotic, it feels like the author was struggling deciding what to include and what to leave out. All in all this book met, but did not exceed, my expectations. Solid 3/5 stars. Also little sidenote: the author is weirdly concerned with demographics and birthrates. You'll find sentences like: "mixed marriages lead to a loss of thousands of Jews every year" like my guy that is some crazy phrasing. Anyway. I'd like to find a similar little book for the other world religions, especially Islam which I feel embarrassingly uneducated about.

It's not that short. There's some very early-20th-century theories: for example, one explains the differences between the Greek and Chinese philosophical traditions being the result of geographic and economic conditions (maritime merchants vs landbound farmers). When taken with a big grain of salt these sorts of theories are fun to read, I simply take them as storytelling and not as scientific. The book is geared towards an audience that knows the Western philosophers and is discovering the Chinese.

Great for acquiring some general knowledge about Chinese literature history. Written by a very opinionated professor who "reckons" a lot of things.