The book examines central historical examples, like the Great Compromise that paved the way for the US constitution, which accepted the institution of slavery despite its inhuman, cruel and humiliating nature. Other test cases include the Munich agreement and the Yalta agreement – working from the assumption that WWII is a sort of laboratory for testing out our moral-political concepts and intuitions. The forced return by the Allies of the Russian POWs to Joseph Stalin's hands served in the book as a paradigm case of a rotten compromise.