The metaphor of a force field, taken from Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, suggests a constellation of juxtaposed rather than fully integrated impulses or elements in a relational network. Force Fields collects the recent essays of Martin Jay, an intellectual historian and cultural critic internationally known for his extensive work on the history of Western Marxism and the intellectual migration from Germany to America. The metaphor not only describes the ways these essays are drawn into a patterned whole, but also serves to clarify many of the substantive issues they treat.