This is one of the ten or so most important works of philosophy of the past twenty-five years. Nagel, more than anyone else, is responsible for the re-examination now going on within Anglo-American philosophy of scientific materialism and of the reductionism and scientism that has gone along with it. Across a wide variety of philosophical problems, the book examines the hold that scientific materialism has had on recent thinking, and it suggests a number of ways that we can loosen that hold. Some of the suggestions are dazzling; even more dazzling are some of the problems themselves, which are discussed nowhere else. Be wary of critics of the book who rate it low; not only do they display their bias against the book's positions but also their inability to appreciate insight in somebody with whom they disagree.