"The most significant modern work on its subject....Habermas offers
perhaps the richest, best developed conceptualization available of the
social nature and foundations of public life."
-- Craig J. Calhoun, "Contemporary Sociology" This is Jü rgen Habermas's
most concrete historical-sociological book and one of the key
contributions to political thought in the postwar period. It will be a
revelation to those who have known Habermas only through his theoretical
writing to find his later interests in problems of legitimation and
communication foreshadowed in this lucid study of the origins, nature,
and evolution of public opinion in democratic societies.