The fifth edition of Boyle and Percy, Contracts: Cases and Commentaries manifests this tension between the ideas market and the products market. When one contrasts this edition to the first there is a significant, though by no means fundamental, shift in emphasis. The ideas dimension has taken on a larger role, but mostly in the form of a grafting onto the conventional structure rather than through conceptual reorientation. The following brief comments attempt to assess the benefits and costs of this incrementalist strategy in the spirit of what bell hooks and Cornel West have described as "critical affirmation".