Enlightening read - Rated 
To a certain extent I agree with some of the other reviewers who have complained that Eagleton is all over the place with this book. But it's a hell of a big subject he has chosen to tackle - and inevitably he has aimed for brevity and clarity over completeness.
It's certainly the only book on cultural theory that I have read as a general reader that is witty, thought-provoking and (best of all) understandable.
I read this on a cramped trans-atlantic flight with a 21 month baby asleep on my lap and zipped through it. The number of exciting ideas Eagleton throws up is huge and well worth the cover price.
The Theory of Today: Wars, Capitalism and the Totalitarian Regime - Rated 
After Theory is highly a significant piece of document to read. Some academicians read it and criticize it for its playfulness and its weakness to find a real solution to the problems that face us today. Eagleton is at least pointing out the "questions" one must follow, in order to face the politics of contemporary culture; this may be capitalism, totalitarianism or could be narcissism "western narcissism involved in working on the history of pubic hair while half the world's population lacks adequate sanitation and survives on less than two dollars a day" (Eagleton, p.6) With this brief quaotation, he is simply saying that a theory that wants to change the world should implement a Marxist agenda. Otherwise, it would prove nothing about humanity in general. In other words, in the words of Derrida, "there is no future without Marx". Other than that, he is funny, entertaining and outstandingly political writer. Every student of literature should read After Theory and must come up with something new: something to face the problems of todays world - wars around the world, America's hypocritical politics about terrorism and so forth. Briefly, perhaps what After Theory is suggesting is that literature/theory must not be detached from the politics of our world.
Highly recommended...
Blinkered - Rated 
Terry Eagleton, the one time enfant terrible of the establishment, is now merely an anomaly, a political dinosaur where once existed some semblance of innovation and witty analysis. After Theory sounds like an academic equivalent of a jaded East End gangster, lament the loss of his culture, usurped by those brash upstarts from the Continent (in this case Mad Dog Baudrillard and the like) An argument has no cultural weight if it does not consider the opposing position. Childish throw away comments pepper the book, and where once Eagleton was witty and pertinent, the jokes are tired and the politics jaded. Disappointing. For whilst the current cultural climate suggests an aposite re-evaluation of what postmodernism actually does, and whether its relevance has since been negated, Eagleton remains the uncle at his niece's 18th party, hogging the dancefloor, but the knees are stiffer than once they were, and the dancing is badly outdated.
Eagleton is on top form again - Rated
This book is a wonderful, thought-provoking read from start to finish. It is empassioned and intelligent, and bears the mark of one of the most politically (and ethically) committed intellectuals of our times. It might be worth taking note of a couple of points before reading it, though.
'After Theory' is not an academic book of the usual sort, and for the more mediocre of intellect (such as many of those who inhabit our universities today) it may prove to be arduous. But this is not the result of some insufficiency on the part of the author - as if one of the foremost critics in Britain had suddenly lost the ability to construct an argument! - it is the point. Eagleton is out to unmask much of both 'Theory' and traditional scholarship for the shameless apologia that it is. For example, he very rarely references his arguments, and footnotes are extremely thin on the ground. This makes the book eminently readable, but also enacts at the level of form the kind of theory that the book argues for at the level of content.
To unpack that last sentence a little: Eagleton contends that we must start to 'think big' again. As such, anything that gets in the way of that sort of thinking - such as petty, bourgeois-academic convention - is more or less done away with, since the book is actually doing what it is saying, i.e. thinking big.
That this sort of effort is perhaps condemned to be little understood within the universities, then, is entirely predictable; 'After Theory' does not conform to standard and restrictive academic convention. Asking Princeton professors to understand it would be like trying to have a conversation with a pond full of tadpoles.
But like many of Eagleton's works, it manages to couch what are some substantial theoretical innovations within a non-academic discourse (e.g. his 'introductions' to various thinkers and topics). If one wanted to extract some kind of theoretical-philosophical statement from the text, it would be perfectly possible to do so. It just means reading intelligently, and perhaps between the lines a little.
'After Theory' is a beautifully judged book. It that is both a full-on political intervention - an exhortation to a better future - and a theoretical treatise of the highest rank. So, gladly: steal this book!
plagued by vagueness - Rated
I'm a Eagleton "fan", if you judge him to have sufficient celebrity to make that possible. I was introduced to his work via Ideology of the Aesthetic as an undergraduate, and I've always been eager to read his pieces when they appear in the popular press. Although I don't go in for it much, I did read The Gatekeeper, which was a entertaining account of his childhood and later life, which contained a good dose of first-hand accounts of the silliness (and seriousness) of liberal theory and practice. I also have more than a passing interest in high theory, and I've read (and enjoyed) Foucalt, Adorno, Heidegger, Deluze, as well as their acolytes like critic Stephen Greenblatt and philosopher Slavoj Zizek. So I was excited to read After Theory. Here we go, I thought -- a first rate mind comes up against a first rate problem: the status of critical theory in the next generation, and its relationship to the larger culture. Sufficiently excited, even, to order the book from the UK (I'm in the States, and it won't come out here until March 2004.) I'm incredibly disappointed with "After Theory." It is one long ramble about the history of the world and the history of theory (two things with quite different time spans.) There is next-to-zero citation from theorists to illustrate the rather contentious things Eagleton might say at times about the "true nature" of some theorist's project. There is precious little evidence at all, really, and little argumentative effort invested. Instead, After Theory rambles like a tourist bus through various hot spots (9/11, WTO protests, conferences on masturbation, ill defined groups of hungry people in Africa), pausing only to issue a vague judgement or two before shuttling you on to somewhere else. Eagleton has lost the ability to distinguish between start and finish in the broad sense where you try to derive an interesting point from something apparently less interesting. I call it the "Brazil or Indonesia" style of writing. More than once in his chapters (more than once on a page, sometimes), Eagleton will say something very vague and tack on "in Brazil or Indonesia." (Well, sometimes it's Kenya or Indonesia, or Kenya and Ulster -- you get the point.) The problem is that Brazil and Indonesia are (to put it mildly) very different places, and anything you say about the nature of culture or politics that applies to both places is either trivial or contentious or flat out wrong. So, sadly: give this one a miss.
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