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Anthony Giddens, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 166 pp., $27.95, ISBN 0 7456 2267 4.
With over 30 books already on the shelves, and new ones being produced at more than one per year, rumour has it that Professor Giddens' publisher once asked him to slow down-he was swamping his own market. But Polity Press would have had no qualms about his latest contribution-the first serious attempt to outline the political philosophy known as `the Third Way', by the man often described as `Tony Blair's favourite intellectual'.
Within Britain, Giddens' book has come under fire from both right and left. Only weeks after its release, in September 1998, The Economist described it as `awesomely, magisterially, and in some ways disturbingly vacuous'. A week later, The Guardian published an editorial headlined `There is no Third Way'. Despite, or perhaps because, of its...