This book (perhaps along with the essays in Prisms) is Adorno's most accessible work. It is written in the maxim/eprigram style usually associated with Nietzsche (and thus Adorno's academic employers found it unsufficiently scholarly). Adorno's ideas about the intellectual and cultural poverty of contemporary life seem right on target to me. At the end of the book--after page upon page upon page of indictments of the vacuousness of our world today--Adorno concludes by stating that the only possible way of meaningfully existing in this world is to view it from the standpoint of how it would be if it were all redeemed. This unusually optimistic ending is probably more true to the real spirit of Adorno's thought than the bleak, condemnatory ideas (which he certainly expresses at length) stereotypically associated with his philosophy. I initially read the book at a very difficult time in my life and--despite its unflinching look at the horrors and blankness of the world--found it quite comforting.