jeremy waldron, reviewing "what should legal analysis become?" in the "columbia law review", praised the book as an "eminently readable" text encompassing many of the same themes that unger explored in his three-volume "politics: a work in constructive social theory". waldron notes that unger's argument in the book has a negative and a positive side. waldron finds the negative side of unger's argument—in which unger attacks contemporary american legal analysis as "incapable of contributing to serious social reform" (as waldron summarizes the argument)—"exciting," and states that unger's negative argument "goes right to the heart of the difficulties about political agency that disfigure modern legal scholarship." waldron finds the positive side of unger's argument "somewhat less convincing." the positive argument, which contains unger's exploration of the alternative futures of democracy, waldron dismisses as "broad-brush sketching of some rather familiar social-democratic ideals ... [that] might have been produced by any intelligent person on the left." waldron sums up his assessment by stating that "so far as the positive suggestions are concerned, one is left frustrated by this book. the negative account of mainstream legal analysis is provocative, and the critique of its orientation to the courts is important and timely."