is animated by a passionate liberal spirit, albeit one of a particular type. [His liberalism is less intimately akin to that of John Locke or Robert Nozick, or L. T. Hobhouse or John Rawls, than it is to that of Isaiah Berlin and, less proximately, John Stuart Mill. Tismăneanu shares with Berlin and Mill an uncompromising commitment to pluralism as the highest political value; a celebration of difference, nonconformity, and tolerance; a deep skepticism concerning ultimate solutions, political blueprints, and unequivocal policy prescriptions; and a wariness regarding the subtler danger of majoritarian authoritarianism.