To rise to the challenges of postmodern culture, Carlson argues, progressives will need to leave the safe harbors of what is familiar and comfortable. A new progressivism can only be forged of a fundamental re-thinking and re-mythologizing of democratic education. Drawing upon cultural studies perspectives, Carlson interrogates philosophy through popular culture for mythologies that might guide such a progressivism. Carlson uses Platonic, Hegelian, Nitzschean, and Heideggerian "mythologies" to elaborate a progressive model that provides powerful ways of "thinking" democratic education and public life.