I wanted to read this book to help me build a framework to understand the vague outlines of post-structuralism which I can hopefully fill in later as I read the actual theorist. The book starts with Saussure and a brief summary of structuralism. From there it proceeds to give brief summaries of a whole range of theorist:
Althusser, Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva, Lacan, Levi-strauss, Lyotard and even Zizek.

There was a heavy emphasis on Psychoanalysis and Lit theory which was disappointing as I hoped there would be more anthropologists. The main argument seemed to be that the project of post-structuralism was to question the reality of the signfied and thus empasis the subjective and contingent nature of language and thus truth. However, the book still believed that there were important political and artistic projects to be undertaken, though the emphasis seemed to be on projects not in the real world but in the towers of academia. Overall, the book was an easy read and probably just as good as spending a couple hours on wikipedia to build a strong base of knowledge.