Neo-liberalism has become the accepted wisdom in western political and economic thinking. The application of neo-liberalist thoughts has, however, met with less than perfect success. As a result, several books have been published criticizing neo-liberal thinking. In contrast to those other books, Michael Lloyd's work takes a deep and comprehensive look at the complete philosophy of neo-liberalism, focusing on the works of Hayek. As such the book is a useful contribution to modern thinking.

Unfortunately, the book is difficult to read and a challenge to understand. First of all, the style of the book is more like a plodding doctoral dissertation than a passionate argument against the neo-liberals. The author would have improved the book if he had relegated many of the criticisms of specific thinkers to the footnotes. Second, many of the chapters require a high level of knowledge of topics ranging from epistemology to economic philosophy. A wide reading of Hayek is also necessary. Finally, the book has numerous typos, grammatical errors and missing words. it is also poorly formatted as an e-book with features like the Table of Contents not being supported. ( )