(Paperback)

Evaluates modernity's wager, namely, the gambit to liberate the modern individual from external social and religious norms by supplanting them with the rational self as its own moral authority. This book argues that 'the fundamentalist doctrine of enlightened reason has called into being its own nemesis' in the forms of ethnic and racial politics.

(Paperback)

As the countries of East-Central Europe struggle to create liberal democracy and the United States and other Western nations attempt to rediscover their own tarnished civil institutions, this title identifies the neglect of the idea of 'civil society' as a central concern common to both cultures today.

(Paperback)

Analyzes trust as a fundamental issue of social relationships. This book asks whether trust - which critics identify as essential in creating a cohesive society - can continue to serve this role. It shows that trust is losing its unifying power because the individual, is being reduced to a sum of group identities and an abstract matrix of rules.