I repute this book one of the best because the class take the moment that Foucault discover subjectivity as more powerful than power, when secularization leave people free of religion. The book, as the other of collection, was done taking the tapes and Foucault`s class notes and rebuilding the class lesson. It`s very detailed, more than 550 pages. Foucault works with I and II century of Roman Empire, but he put it in perspective. Greeks and Roman Republic, Roman transition and then Roman democratic empire. He follows how epicureans, cynics and stoics reacts face the rise of Roman Empire. He tries to distinguish the parrhesia (fearless speech and freedom) as a different dimension between the Platonic epistrophe and the Christian metanoia vis a vis the transformation of the relationship of self care and self knowledge. After the rise of empire, public life becomes mundanity and the relationship between self care with self knowledge includes a conversion to yourself that differentiate parrhesia from epistrophe and metanoia. The last two had erased completely the meaning of parrhesÃa in the ancient world, deleting an original sense of truth and subjectivity where the subject was tied with the truth talked by himself. Epistrophe was the reminiscence of a past world/life, and the metanoia was the conversion to a new world/life, but parrhesia was the conversion to himself understood as the present and truth world/life. I think that the book is the Foucault`s "What Is The Philosophy?" The pages where he opposes paidea and parrhesia are a lesson about the difference between truth in mass media and truth in web media; the truth of blogosphere, forums and alike. The rescue of parrhesia`s meaning in the ancient society is a very actual problem and show ours spiritual and social troubles in a new light. The edition has a Frédéric Gros` essay in the end of the book that try to contextualize the Course and talk about all material in the Foucault`s notebooks that he will use in the last book about the flesh, and never used but in this class.