All these books are in print and available from the publishers except when otherwise indicated.
Knowledge and Politics (Free Press 1976)
My first book. A philosophical study of a dominant set of ideas about personality and society, contrasted with a view I offer in substitution. A postscript in subsequent printings of the book summarizes how I later came to judge its argument. - Get this book from the Free Press
Law in Modern Society: Towards a Criticism of Social Theory (Free Press 1984)
A forerunner of my ideas in social theory, worked out primarily through the comparative historical sociology of law and secondarily through the criticism of classical European social theory. - Get this book from the Free Press
Passion: An Essay on Personality (Free Press 1984)
A philosophical discussion of the experience and the ideal of personality. It argues for a revision of our dominant Christian-romantic view of the person as well as of our beliefs about how to live. It explores the ideas about selfhood that accompany my ideas about society. - Get this book from the Free Press
The Critical Legal Studies Movement (Harvard University Press 1986)
Less a description of a movement of legal ideas through which some of us attacked the then prevailing consensus in the law schools than a proposal for the reorientation of legal thought. For the further development of my ideas about law, see my recent book, What Should Legal Analysis Become?
The Politics books -
The following three books were originally published by Cambridge Univeristy Press in 1987 under the general title Politics. Verso has now brought out new editions of all three books (False Necessity in 2002 and Social Theory: Its Situation and Its Task and Plasticity into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success in 2004). All three books are now available in paperback. See the links below. The new edition of False Necessity begins with a long introduction reconsidering my ideas about society and connecting them with contemporary debates and experiences.
Note the link to Verso's website for direct purchase of those of my books that Verso has published. Verso's phone number in New York is 212 8079680. Its phone number in London (headquarters) is 44 207 4373546.
A collection of studies of the ideas of these books is Critique and Construction: A Symposium on Roberto Unger's Politics, edited by Robin W. Lovin and Michael J. Perry (Cambridge University Press 1990). This book is no longer in print.
Social Theory: Its Situation and Its Task (Verso 2004, originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1987)
The full text is available on this website. An examination of the starting points in contemporary thought and experience for the project of social thought I go on to develop in False Necessity and later books. - Get this book from Verso Books
False Necessity: Antinecessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy (Verso 2002, originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1987)
The new edition includes a long Introduction, posted on this website. False Necessity is my most extended statement in explanatory social theory. It also presents a set of programmatic ideas imagined at a moment more distant from present reality than the proposals of my later book, Democracy Realized. The extensive bibliographical notes may help the reader understand the inspirations to many of the ideas in the book. - Get this book from Verso Books
Plasticity into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success (Verso 2004, originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1987)
The full text is available on this website. The third of the Politics books. Wholly different in style of discourse from the other two books, it develops its central theme of the rewards of plasticity through three detailed comparative-historical essays. - Get this book from Verso Books
A Alternativa Transformadora: Como Democratizar o Brasil (Editora Guanabara 1990)
A collection of my first set of programmatic writings about Brazil, some of them republished in the later book, A Segunda Via: Presente e Futuro do Brasil.
O Proximo Passo: Uma Alternativa Pratica ao Neoliberalismo, with Ciro Gomes (Editora Topbooks 1996)
A proposal for Brazil, written with Ciro Gomes, before his first campaign for the Presidency of Brazil. The full text is published on this website.
What Should Legal Analysis Become? (Verso 1996)
The central theme is the redefinition of legal analysis as a practice of institutional imagination. The alternatives for which I have argued and worked require the development of new discursive practices and the transformation of specialized and powerful domains of professional life and thought such as law. - Get this book from Verso Books
Politics: The Central Texts, edited, with an introduction, by Zhiyuan Cui (Verso 1997)
A selection of texts from the three Politics books. Readers may find Cui's introduction very helpful. - Get this book from Verso Books
The Future of American Progressivism with Cornel West (Beacon Press 1998)
An early attempt to discover what the contemporary debate about the possible can and should look like in the United States. - Get this book from Beacon Press
Democracy Realized: The Progressive Alternative (Verso 1998)
A comprehensive and schematic statement of the way to democratize the market economy and to deepen democracy in richer as well as in poorer countries. - Get this book from Verso Books
A Segunda Via: Presente e Futuro do Brasil (Editora Boitempo 2000)
A collection of my more recent writings, both interpretive and programmatic, about Brazil. The long introduction, posted in the Portuguese language section of this website, summarizes the major themes connecting them to a worldwide debate.
What Should the Left Propose? (Verso 2006)
A vision for the Left today: what Leftists should stand for in the contests over national alternatives and alternative globalizations. The remarriage of theory and practice. - Get this book from Verso Books
The Self Awakened? (Harvard University Press 2007)
- Get this book from Harvard University Press