"This book provides an accurate, clear, and ? most exceptionally ? unintimidating introduction to Hegel. The engaging discussions of his individual works serve to orient the reader to the concerns and achievements of each stage in Hegel?s thought ? as well as to its failures, which Fritzman discusses with fairness. Fritzman?s accounts of the more important influences on Hegel and of the latter?s influences on later thought are careful and wide-ranging. They not only show Hegel?s importance but also provide an excellent overview of where philosophy is today. Many think that such an overview is not possible; Fritzman shows that it is." John McCumber, University of California, Los Angeles "In this contextually rich account, J.M. Fritzman shows students, in language they can easily grasp, a Hegel who is not the architect of a grand, a priori system that sees all and foresees all but one who is revealed as a great diagnostician, retrospectively making sense of himself and his world by reflectively understanding the tensions and forces that constitute and color current experience, informed, as it necessarily is, by its history and social context." Willem DeVries, University of New Hampshire "Of all the introductions to Hegel, J. M. Fritzman's is perhaps the most accessible one to date." Prof. David Manier, City University of New York