For a man who has made few comments and even fewer appearances since leaving the castle in February of 2003, such a ranking shows remarkable staying power in the minds of millions.

Interestingly, that respect is based almost entirely on Havel's political actions rather than his work in the theater. Few of the voters, one imagines, who placed Havel ahead of Naomi Klein and Christopher Hitchens would be able to outline the plot of The Garden Party or Audience. But do Havel's political thoughts and works really warrant such esteem?

In Václav Havel: Civic Responsibility in the Postmodern Age, James Pontuso, professor of political science at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, seems to say "yes" — with qualifications. Pontuso's 175-page analysis of Havel's political importance is one in a series on 20th-century political "thinkers" whose other subjects include such luminaries as Jürgen Habermas, Gandhi, Simone Weil and Paul Ricoeur.

As might be expected, this is not a book for amateur historians or garden-variety Czechophiles. One chapter contains a basic 12-page overview of Heideggerian philosophy before embarking on "Havel's Response to Heidegger," a passage of similar length that seems to belabor its point: Havel might have been influenced by Heidegger, but in terms of philosophical importance, he is hardly on equal footing, suffering in the comparison. (In literary terms, "Havel versus Brecht" presents a similar problem.)

Nonetheless, Pontuso's book remains an interesting read, if only for his excellent sense of context. The first chapter, "A Life Like a Work of Art," should be required reading for incoming study-abroad students, summarizing Havel's biography, the machinations of the Velvet Revolution and life in communist Czechoslovakia in a few speedy pages.

A Fulbright lecturer at Charles University in 1993, Pontuso shows himself to be deftly aware of both Czech and regional history, using this knowledge to place Havel's life and writings —including the creative output — into a dense, well-researched framework: One chapter has 145 footnotes.

Equally interesting is the laundry-list rundown of what Pontuso's predecessors have written about Havel: not a philosopher; definitely a philosopher; a postmodernist; an idealistic failure; a religious philosopher; influenced by existentialism; alien to it. (For the record, Pontuso points out that Havel has said he is not a philosopher but admits to contradicting himself repeatedly.)

With its constellations of footnotes and frequent philosophical shout-outs, Václav Havel: Civic Responsibility in the Postmodern Age is not for everyone. However, it does offer a good handhold on Havel's political-philosophical ruminations and standing abroad. (In a strange mise-en-abyme, the very publication of a book analyzing Havel's political importance also serves as a justification of that importance: We wrote this book about him, didn't we?)

Nonetheless, one can easily imagine that Havel might be happier with a renewed respect for his artistic importance. While his plays were produced regularly in the '90s, many of his theatrical works have recently fallen out of favor.