In these conversations, Murchland finds a number of reasons for democracy’s continuing strength, including its embrace of the very ambiguity and contradiction decried by its critics, the constant rethinking of democracy and its practices, and the powerful alliance between democracy and capitalism. He also addresses the contemporary challenges to democracy, including the balancing of privacy and individual rights with equality and community needs and the necessity to strengthen democracy, which flourishes locally, on the national level. Murchland’s conversations are with people who have read and thought deeply about democracy and other political systems, including Martin Matustik and Merab Mamardashvili, who lived behind the Iron Curtain; pollster Daniel Yankelovich; lawyer, mayor, and legislator Daniel Kemmis; and citizen-activist Elmer Johnson. Lively and thought-provoking, the book confronts the very basis of our society in a way that stimulates a new appreciation of democracy and a genuine awareness of the need to remodel it for the twenty-first century.