In this collection of essays, Michael Walzer discusses how obligations are incurred, sustained, and (sometimes) abandoned by citizens of the modern state and members of political parties and movements as they respond to and participate in the most crucial and controversial aspects of citizenship: resistance, dissent, civil disobedience, war, and revolution. Walzer approaches these issues with insight and historical perspective, exhibiting an extraordinary understanding for rebels, radicals, and rational revolutionaries. The reader will not always agree with Walzer but he cannot help being stimulated, excited, challenged, and moved to thoughtful analysis.

A distinguished contribution; political theorists will learn much from this book and so should many non-theorists as well. To them it offers not only a series of penetrating analyses…but also an outstanding example of that working out of a tradition of thought which…is so vital to the vocation of political theory. * American Political Science Review *
This book by Professor Walzer stands as a fresh demonstration that two centuries’ development of analytic tools and reasoning can carry old premises to conclusions both fresh and subtle. -- David L. Bazelon

Michael Walzer is Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.