Major themes in Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy include:
-- the innovation of mathematical logic by Gottlob Frege at the close of the nineteenth century and its independent development by Bertrand Russell;
-- the story of Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. E. Moore, and the rise of logical positivism; and
-- the impact of advancements in science on the world of philosophy.

Along the way, Stroll also covers the theories of Rudolf Carnap, W.V.O. Quine, Gilbert Ryle, J. L. Austin, Hilary Putnam, Ruth Marcus, and Patricia and Paul Churchland.

Stroll's approach to his subject treats the critical movements in analytic philosophy in terms of the philosophers who defined them. In his capable hands, the notoriously complex realm of analytic philosophy emerges less as an abstract enterprise than as a domain of personalities and their competing methods and arguments.