This text compiles and evaluates theories of contract law. The author offers his own practical perspective that emphasizes contract law's complexity and questions the utility of abstract unitary theories. The text should interest legal theorists, practising lawyers, law students, and general readers who want to learn more about contract law and theory. Each chapter presents a pair of contrasting theories to clarify the central issue of contract law and theory, to set forth the range of views, and to help identify a practical middle ground. Among the contract theories discussed and analyzed are promise, contextual, feminist, formal, mainstream, critical, economic, empirical and relational.