Slavoj Zizek has been called quot;an academic rock starquot; and quot;the wild man of theoryquot;; his writing mixes astonishing erudition and references to pop culture in order to dissect current intellectual pieties. In The Puppet and the Dwarf he offers a close reading of today"s religious constellation from the viewpoint of Lacanian psychoanalysis. He critically confronts both predominant versions of today"s spiritualitymdash;New Age gnosticism and deconstructionist-Levinasian Judaismmdash;and then tries to redeem the quot;materialistquot; kernel of Christianity. His reading of Christianity is explicitly political, discerning in the Pauline community of believers the first version of a revolutionary collective. Since today even advocates of Enlightenment like Jurgen Habermas acknowledge that a religious vision is needed to ground our ethical and political stance in a quot;postsecularquot; age, this bookmdash;with a stance that is clearly materialist and at the same time indebted to the core of the Christian legacymdash;is certain to stir controversy.