This book is your machete in the jungle of contemporary critical language. The first half is a brief historical background covering Marxism, structuralism, deconstruction, postmodernism, feminism and others. By far the most useful part is the glossary, which fills almost half of the book. The glossary alone is worth the cost. Its only fault is that sometimes the definitions are a little a little too brief for this field. Nevertheless, a must-have if you are a student of art history, anthropology, literary criticism, or other field involved with cultural criticism.