Each piece is fully annotated. Backgrounds includes a sketch of Rousseau's life, selections from his Confessions, and comments on Rousseau's work and character from such illustrious contemporaries and early critics as Voltaire, Hume, Boswell and Johnson, Paine, Kant, and Proudhon. Commentaries includes assessments of Rousseau's political thought by a wide variety of scholars and critics including Judith Shklar, Robert Nisbet, Simone Weil, and Benjamin R. Barber.