Dieter Thomä's great book brings a forgotten troublemaker back to life: the puer robustus, the strong boy who doesn’t follow the rules, who clashes, rebels, and sometimes strikes. For centuries, he has stirred up emotions. Hobbes and Rousseau, Schiller and Diderot, Marx, Freud, Carl Schmitt, and many others saw him as a key figure in addressing a central problem of political philosophy: the relationship between order and disruption. Even today, there are free riders and contrarians, loners and rebels at the fringes of society, and behind them all lies the puer robustus. It’s high time to rediscover him!.