"This [book] includes the three most important of Rousseau's political writings: Discourse on inequality, Discourse on political economy, and On social contract ... As background to these works, [it] provides a sketch of Rousseau's life, selections from his Confessions, and comments on Rousseau's work and character from such ... contemporaries and early critics as Voltaire, Hume, Boswell and Johnson, Paine, Kant, and Proudhon. A section of "Commentaries"...