help'. Bernstein, while not abandoning philosophy in the first sense, would like to recapture the connection between philosophical pursuits and the living of a human life. And, for him, irony is the key to this connection. To attain his ends, Bernstein keeps his focus narrow. He does not deal in any significant way with the less philosophical, more literary investigations of the history and concept of irony. In broad outline, Bernstein considers the ideas concerning irony that are found in the thought of Jonathan Lear and Richard Rorty, two contemporary philosophers who see a central role for the concept of irony. Bernstein also examines the views of Alexander Nehamas and Gregory Vlastos, two specialists in ancient philosophy who have quite different views on the meaning of Socratic irony. And, tying this all together, Bernstein examines Kierkegaard's concept of irony, which provides Bernstein with his fulcrum. According to Kierkegaard: 'a life worthy of being called human begins with irony.' (pp. 79, 80, 81, 88, and elsewhere) To explain the meaning of this is the ultimate challenge of the book. (…) Despite Bernstein's efforts, one comes away from the book still with very little idea of what irony is when it comes to living a human (a good human) life. I would argue that an opportunity was missed in Bernstein's emphasis on Socratic irony rather than on Kierkegaard and subsequent existentialist reflection. The existentialists have a better handle on the 'thing' that the ironist-proponents are trying to grapple with. A more nuanced understanding of the difficult imperative of making a self comes from early Heidegger and the Marxism-informed later Sartre. Such thinkers might afford a better grasp of facticity to go along with the ambiguity of self-transcendence that Bernstein is talking about in the language of irony. One might thus argue that, as it stands, Bernstein's approach remains a 'bourgeois' line of thinking, profoundly individualistic, with little reference to social solidarity as a key component of becoming who one is.' (ERIC WEISLOGEL in Marx & Philosophy, review 16391).