Ronald Bogue's essays touch on cinema, music, theatre, painting, fiction, education, ecology, ethology, politics, technology and philosophy. He creates paradigmatic occasions of thinking with Deleuze - thinking with him and through him, following diverse lines of his thought and engaging concepts to extend his thought into areas Deleuze did not explore.
These frequently-cited, classic essays have all been reworked to make them even better. Each one offers a separate entry into Deleuze's thought but they all serve to illuminate the pivotal role the arts play in the political project of inventing a people to come and the broader project of promoting an ecologically viable new earth.
I am tempted to say that this collection of fine essays is the culmination of a brilliant career, but I suspect that Ron Bogue has a few more volumes in him yet, if his continued participation in Deleuze/Guattari conferences is any indication. I heard many of these chapters as earlier talks, but it is a wonderful thing to have all of these essays developed and collected. The opening section, "Thinking Otherwise", has but one chapter, "The Master Apprentice", and is a magnificent opening explanation of the teacher-student role inherent in all of Deleuze's works. The five other sections -- II. The Possible and a People to Come, III. Music and Philosophy, IV. Literature and Philosophy, V. Sight, Sound and Language, VI. Nature -- reflect at once Bogue's lifelong commitments in his previous writing on Deleuze, and also his growing interests in the political and the ecological. All in all, this is a superb reference text, one to which I will return frequently since it helps stimulate my own "thinking with Deleuze".