Bah and frankly it's far from that. Contrary to what one of the comments in this section suggested psa it is at all necessary to be aggregated normalien etc. to understand this book and learn something. To prove I'm a modest sophomore sociology in Rennes! So beware this is not a book that reads necessarily easy, but it is not unreadable, and it does not seem that the complexity that is occasionally found in its pages is superfluous.
The book is divided into 3 main parts. The first deals with the birth of liberalism, a second of its crisis and its rebuilding during the XIXth - XXth century and a third concretely examines how the neoliberal corpus is used and has found a way to govern men, through policy analysis, particularly in Europe. In the "Birth of biopolitics" Foucault I had been bothered because I had the feeling that it was confined to the description of liberal ideas and ordo / neoliberal without really going into criticism. Here, the authors, who are largely based on Foucault, going in the critical especially through the psychological effects of the neoliberal way of governing. Especially, in the conclusion, they sketch a resistance program (probably they develop without their book "Common") which may give rise to reflection.
So yes this book can be complicated, but worth reading is worth for many reasons: its very fine and precise analysis of the ideas of different authors and ordo liberals and neoliberals, and especially contradictions even in the midst of this current of thought and its history and its roots in the governments of the twentieth century; its critical angle of attack on what they call the néoolibérale governmentality; and finally the tracks it opens.
In the same kind I had read "Capitalism desire and servitude" and "Society of affects" Frédéric Lordon, it could possibly complete the picture that is drawn here.
