Alienation, the concept Hegel and Marx made so central to European political and social thought, has receded in importance in more recent political philosophy. Like self-deception and weakness of will, it is extremely resistant to analysis even though it continues to be a major theme of modern life and accounts of the features of contemporary life. Jaeggi's great accomplishment in her book is to provide the outlines of a new theory of an old term and thereby to give the concept a new life by showing its linkage to major ethical and political concerns. She develops a sophisticated and clear account of it with her novel idea of "relationless relations" as failures of self-appropriation as having to do with how institutions and practices actually function in modern life. She illustrates this thesis with a variety of concrete examples carried out with a kind of phenomenological finesse one rarely finds nowadays. She forcefully brings out its affinities with the idea of "drift," and of being present in an action, and of how the experience of alienation problematizes the very concept of what can count as one's "own" action. With this book, an entire tradition of political and social philosophy has received a new lease on life.