The breadth and depth of Zygmunt Baumans engagement with social theory and the history of social thought has perhaps been underestimated in part because many of his early writings were in Polish and never translated into English and in part because many important pieces appeared in edited volumes and journals that are not readily available. This volume brings together hitherto unknown or rare pieces by Bauman on the theme of theory and society and also makes available previously unpublished material from the Bauman Archive at the University of Leeds. A consistent theme of Baumans work was his sustained engagement with humanism and this provides a unifying thread in the pieces brought together in this volume.