This book is a critique and reinterpretation of modernity by social thinker, Alain Touriane. He begins by recalling the triumph of rationalist conceptions of modernity, then traces the destruction, in both thought and social practices, of that idea of modernity, through the critiques of consciousness and reason elaborated by Nietzsche and Freud, and in the rise of consumer society and mass communications. From modernity triumphant to modernity in crisis, Touraine charts a course through a complex history, setting the scene for his reinterpretation of the modern in the final section of the book.