This is no ordinary intellectual history of civil society's polysemous elaboration. Colas deploys psychoanalytic, philological, and sociological approaches to explain the mutual dependence of civil society and fanaticism in theology and philosophy from Aristotle and Augustine to Marx and Gorbachev. The civil society-based critique of Marxism-Leninism in theory and practice is familiar and provides the book's contemporary resonance. Attention to the ambiguities and transformations of civil society through translation, from koinonia politike through die burgerliche Gesellsehaft is valuable. Most important, however, is the argument about fanaticism's historical significance in making civil society.