Robert Koons teaches philosophy at the University of Texas in Austin. In the last sentence of the text, he writes, "We have attempted to bring the reader as close as possible to the state of the art in metaphysics while presupposing very little prior knowledge of the field." The authors discuss various perspectives on the major aspects of metaphysics. They write about the foundations, dispositions, universals and particulars, the nature of reality, modality, space and time, unity and causation. They strive to give a fair hearing to the various underlying positions, in the end stressing four possibilities: neo-Humeism (as represented by D.K. Lewis), neo-Aristotelianism, Fortibrachianism (taken from the Latin name of David Armstrong), and Quietism (associated with Roderick Chisholm, Trevor Merricks, Alvin Plantinga, George Bealer, and Peter van Inwagen). I find it a weakness that the authors do not strongly identify with any of the schools of thought, but simply contrast them. Again, in the last paragraph they write, "Of course the evidence we have surveyed in this book is not the final word. Our ability to ascertain the truth will improve as we understand more fully the implications of the theses in question, and as we gain more insight into the significance of what we already know. We hope that this book will be a stimulant to further metaphysical research."
It may be that the book expresses the state of the art of metaphysics in the English-speaking world, But it does not address well such questions as the existence of God. The focus of the study is on material realities, with some reference to what is distinctive about human beings.