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Since his youth in the 1930s, Murray Bookchin has devoted his life to looking for ways to replace today's authoritarian society, and the system that immiserates most of humanity and poisons the natural world, with a more enlightened and rational alternative. A close student of the European enlightenment, he is best known for introducing the idea of ecology to the political left, and for first positing that a liberatory society would also have to be an ecological society. Over the course of several decades, "libertarian municipalism", the political dimension of the broader body of ideas known as social ecology, was developed by this world famous social theorist. Written in short, to-the-point chapters, this book presents an introductory overview of the ideas as Bookchin developed them. In addition to laying out the basic components of libertarian municipalism's political ideas (ideas of how to create free cities), it sketches the historical and philosophical context in which Bookchin grounds them and provides substantial material on the practical questions of creating and organizing a new municipal movement toward such democratic cities. Bookchin has generously provided the lengthy interview that makes up the last third of this book.