The focus of Spectrum is the range of contemporary ideas that runs from conservative to liberal to radical conceptions of state and society. Its opening section looks at the theories of four major minds of the twentieth-century Right, whose influence has been long-lasting in the Atlantic world: Michael Oakeshott, Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss and Friedrich von Hayek; thereafter two prominent political writers in contemporary Britain, Ferdinand Mount and Timothy Garton Ash. The Middle section considers the late work of three of the most celebrated liberal philosophers of the time, John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas and Norberto Bobbio - surveying their respective conceptions of the domestic life of Western Democracies, and of a desirable international order. There follow reflections on a number of significant figures in the culture of the Left: the historians Edward Thompson, Robbert Breenner and Eric Hobsbawm; the classicist Sebastiano Timpanaro; the sociologist Goran Therborn; the novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
The book ends with some comparative observations on the two leading intellectual periodicals of the UK and USA, the London Review of Books and New York Review of Books; and a piece of family history.