Cogent, accessible and erudite - this is a fine volume on the important philosopher (and inspiration for the European Union we are told) - I found the prose admirably clear - it took me a few chapters to find the focus of the book, apart from its being about Kojeve. It aims to set him in contexts of european philosophy in the west, and references to early take on Hegel andHeidegger were interesting. I have always wondered about his relationship to Leo Strauss - never quite seeing how they met eye to eye - but, in fact, although friends, they were very different thinkers. This is a terrific book for scholarly but out-of-academia reader too ... highly recommended.