Neoliberalism. Neoconservatism. Postmarxism. Postmodernism. Is there really something genuinely new about today's isms? Have we moved past our traditional ideological landscape? Combining political history, philosophical interpretation, and good old-fashioned story-telling, Manfred Steger traces ideology's remarkable journey from Count Destutt de Tracy's Enlightenment "science of ideas " to President George W. Bush's "imperial globalism. " Rejecting futile
attempts to "update " modern political belief systems by adorning them with prefixes, the author offers instead a highly original explanation for their novelty-their increasing ability to articulate
deep-seated understandings of community in global rather than national terms. Surveying the profoundly altered ideological landscape of our time, the book ends with a timely interpretation of the apparent convergence of ideology and religion in the dawning global age-a broad phenomenon that extends beyond the obvious cases of Christian fundamentalism and Islamic jihadism.