The reader reprints extracts of key historical texts - those of Daniel Bell on the post-industrial society and Jean-Francois Lyotard on the post-modern condition. The new cultural logic of contested pluralism is analysed in seminal papers by Andreas Hyssen and Jim Collins. The fundamental ideas on post-modern literature are defined by Umberto Eco, John Barth and David Lodge and the theories they present challenge the notion of post-modernism as an ultra avant-garde movement and the expression of a consumer society. For this second edition of the book, Charles Jencks presents a new overview of the Post-Modern, reflecting its maturity as a movement.