The selection of thinkers here are good, although–unlike what the Goodreads title says–it’s twenty-one thinkers. We have autonomists like Berardi and Virno, speculative realists like Timothy Morton and Quentin Meillassoux, Jodie Dean is here with her communicative capitalism, as is Yann Boutang with his cognitive capitalism, and–of course–the book concludes with Donna Haraway (aka the queen of critical theory). Obviously, there are numerous others here, and the topics range from political economy to ecology/nature, gender, media, labor, and so much more. The only crowd left out seems to be the accelerationists. That said, Wark did write a blog post about Nick Land for Verso, so I suppose that counts.

The main challenge with this book is actually the writing style. Given that these chapters are attempts to summarize the thought of major 21st century critical theorists, I hoped that they would be a bit more approachable. The content of some chapters is much clearer than others: there were a handful that left me scratching my head about what Wark (or the originally thinker) even meant. This is a shame, because the book is an opportunity to make critical theory exciting. For those with strong grounding in critical theory, this book is solid, but it isn’t a great starting point for those who are unfamiliar with it.

The only thing that bugged me is the way that Wark plugged her own books throughout the chapter. A Hacker Manifesto, Gamer Theory, and Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene are all frequently mentioned. There is no issue with her conversing and disputing the ideas of the thinkers listed here, but the marketing for her own works struck me as particularly ham-fisted.

It’s worth the read if you’re well-read on theory and are looking for a sense of recent advances. If not, this book isn’t great.