This book analyzes Jonathan Swift Gulliver Travels from a political philosophy perspective. When authors have focused on politics in Swift writings, this has usually meant a study of how Swift located himself on issues of his day such as church and state, and Ireland. Robertson claims by contrast that Gulliver Travels is fundamentally a book about the “ancients� (e.g. Plato, Aristotle), and the “moderns� (science and technology), and their contrasting views about the human condition. The claim that the Travels is “a kind of prolegomena� to political philosophy leaves open the possibility that it does not achieve, or seek to achieve, a fusion of various teachings but rather uses the device of alien societies to point us to uncomfortable aspects of political philosophy “larger questions� we are prone to ignore.  Swift, Robertson argues, draws our attention to some version of the classical republic, as idealized in Aristotle political writings andin Plato Republic, as opposed to a modern regime which, at its best or most intellectual, emphasizes modern science and technology in combination as a way to improve the human condition.