“For decades,  William Ophuls has been among the world's most original thinkers about  the implications of our global ecological crisis for freedom, democracy,  and political order. In Plato’s Revenge, he goes to the essence of this  crisis: the deep, tacit, and widespread beliefs that nature and society  are nothing more than machines, that the state should play no role in  cultivating citizens’ virtue, and that self-interested individuals  should rely solely on reason to guide their lives. Ophuls weaves  together the ideas of some of history’s greatest thinkers to argue that  humankind's future lies in small, simple republics that cultivate their  citizens’ virtue through natural law. In doing so, he shreds  conventional wisdom and invigorates our conversation about the kind of  world we intend our grandchildren to inherit.”

—Thomas Homer-Dixon,  University of Waterloo, author of The Upside of Down: Catastrophe,  Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilizati