Hofmann’s book is a historically minded, revisionist, critical companion to Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Assuming potential readers already know and teach the book, Hofmann spends the bulk of his energies on the historical record, e.g., the debates in English Parliament or trade in the 17th-century Dutch Republic. Does Habermas’s “model case” of 19th-century England fit the bill for a genuine public sphere? (No.) Hofmann also engages with an array of Habermas’s influences, among them Schiller, Say, Rousseau, Marx, and Kant. Hofmann corrects and sometimes scolds Habermas for errors of omission and commission, for misunderstanding or ignoring important historical or intellectual sources, and for inconsistently disowning and yet appropriating what Hofmann calls the “stylized” account of the rise of intimacy, the Enlightenment, and the modern state in Reinhart Koselleck via his teacher, Carl Schmitt. Though in a later essay, Habermas acknowledges the early pluralization of public spheres, Hofmann usefully goes some way toward showing just what such an account might look like. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students through faculty.

CHOICE

This book is well-written and makes a major contribution to a highly significant, seminal concept that has reverberated across disciplines, over decades, and essentially transformed our understanding of civil society and the role of public discourse. Dr. Hofmann’s insights and critiques reveal a labor of love and a highly time-consuming project. The work involved in this book is evident, and because of its quality it will no doubt have a long life in the literature.

- Robin Andersen, Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University, New York City,

As an exegesis of the work of a central figure in modern intellectual history, Habermas’s Public Sphere: A Critique is brilliant. Dr. Hofmann demonstrates as complete an understanding of Habermas’s work as I have encountered. [He] displays an extraordinary capacity to draw from intellectual history across a broad range of disciplines including historiography, political economy, literature, philosophy, and others, from the seventeenth century on. [He] writes about the critical theorist with such skill and ease that reading it leaves one with the impression that he intellectually occupies Habermas’s world.

- Vincent Mosco, Professor of Sociology Emeritus, Queen’s University; Distinguished Professor in the New Media Centre, School of Journalism and Communication, Fudan University, Shanghai,