An insightful, concise and cogent discussion of many of the most important thinkers in the history of social thought, much of it still relevant today, in an age of terrorism and uncertainty.

Interestingly, my father was a psychologist and worked with Boguslaw for a time, whose friends called him "Bogie." My father recommended the book to me, and I read it with pleasure. I am primarily a neurobiologist by education, but I have enough psychology and sociology background to appreciate Boguslaw's great little book.

It's unfortunate this highly readable and relevant book is out of print. If you can find one, or a used copy, pick it up, you won't be disappointed.

Mr. Boguslaw has written a book of enduring significance for foreign affairs, despite its wry, ironic title, The New Utopians. In his day, a standard example of system failure was the weapons assignment failure of German anti-aircraft batteries in Berlin to repel British bombing missions. The formalistic system approach of Richard Cheney to advocate a missile defense system is easily confused by Vladimir Putin's rejoinder that he could simply attach multiple independent reentry vehicles to the warheads of his nuclear missiles, thereby confusing the defensive gunners and their algorithms.
Today we find terrorists using the ad hoc systems approach, do this because of that, to exploit our freedoms in order to achieve their destructive goals. In some terrorists, we find a view that a suicide bomber achieves Utopia in the Next World, where he will find sport with whiskey and virgins.
Aside from these observations, I urge that Mr. Boguslaw gives us some powerful insights into our world of systems, such as those for transportation or communication, in a plain spoken way that is altogether accessible to the educated reader.