Michael J. Sandel tackles the widely shared dissatisfaction with contemporary America from a “communitarian” perspective in his newly published Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 417 pages, $ 24.95).

While communitarians like Sandel lean leftward, they differ from earlier leftists in stressing political concerns rather than economic and social ones. They eschew cosmopolitanism and extol “participation” and seek to empower local communities at the expense of big business and big government both.