Résumé: This is an excellent introduction for someone interested in models of the public sphere. While all the authors are proponents of the deliberative model of democracy (as opposed to, for instance, the liberal, interest-based, technocratic, communitarian, or civic-republican) many of them place their arguments in the context of other models. So, the book reads like a symposium of like-minded people, rather than like a rally of true believers.
Almost all of the essays are accessible to a generalist, but several really stand out (especially those by Benhabib, Fraser, and Young).