Todays world is influenced by many different views of life. Everyone has heard the names of most of them, yet when see or hear the words communism, democracy, or nationalism we tend to react emotionally. We view one as good, another as bad, and seldom make the effort to understand what these words mean. This reaction is due to our acceptance, whether consciously recognized or not, of one or more of these views of life. This edition has been completely rethought, reorganized and rewritten. Significant changes have been made in most chapters in an attempt to be more accurate, more complete and more easily understood. In particular, each chapter has been brought up to date, since the world continually changes and ideologies change along with it. The chapters have been rearranged to better reflect the relationships among the ideologies.