The new encyclopedia of social reform Book

Only Raymond Williams could write what amounts to an enjoyable dictionary. Though the book isn't necessarily meant to be read cover to cover, my "project" of reading one letter a day over the past month has been an enlightening, engaging, and sometimes surprising one. More generally, Williams' impulse in writing this has to be praised. Originally an appendix to Culture and Society, what became Keywords was then so massive he decided to publish it separately. As always, in disentangling the meaning of terms and concepts that are often taken for granted, Williams hopes to problematize our understandings of meaning. He insists that his is not a project, in fact, about meaning. Rather, it is about meanings (plural), which -- when unpacked and made visible -- do not bring about resolution but "just that extra edge of consciousness" (p.24). At its most basic level, that is exactly what this book is -- simultaneously and meditation and enumeration of the evolving contingencies of language that encourages us to see the connection between words and ideology.