In the world of Hegel studies, Robert Pippin casts a long shadow. His first book on the philosophical giant, Hegel's Idealism : The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness (Cambridge University Press, 1989), defended a daringly re visionary reading of Hegel's overall project, which has since become standard fare. His more recent venture, collected in Hegel's Practical Philosophy : Rational Agency as Ethical Life (Cambridge University Press, 2008), breathed new life into Hegel's theory of agency by pitting it against contemporary Hobbesian and Kantian reconstructions. Now, Pippin's newest contribution to the literature, Hegel on Self-Consciousness: Desire and Death in the Phenomenology of Spirit, returns to the subject of selfconsciousness and provides a detailed reinterpretation of Hegel's notorious masterslave dialectic. On Pippin's insightful and bold new reading, Hegel's aim in this section is to develop a novel conception of self-consciousness, defined as the practical activity of questioning and confirming the truth of one's own beliefs, which Pippin describes as a normative and social achievement rather than as a two-place observational relation. Readers at every level of familiarity with Hegel can find something of value in this book. The uninitiated will appreciate Pippin's accessible and reader-friendly prose - the text is adapted from a lecture series, and it retains a conversational style punctuated with frequent sign-posting and summary - as well as its clear articulation of Hegel's general philosophical project, couched in terms familiar to contemporary philosophical discourse. Students and scholars in disciplines outside of philosophy will benefit from the clear, concise, and philosophically rigorous account of a frequently cited but rarely read text, which is too often commandeered for philosophically negligent purposes. Finally, graduate students and even seasoned experts in the field will find value in the work, too, as it presents an overview and assessment of the interpretive project which began more than 20 years ago and