Description
In this new book Michael Mann reflects on the meaning of his project as a whole, both as a contribution to social theory and as a guide to the options and constraints that face the contemporary world now and in the near future. He gives sustained attention to the situation of the United States, the nature of the challenge that may come from China, the unrestrained and perhaps unrestrainable power of finance, and the looming crisis of environmental degradation.
This concise and accessible book is the ideal introduction to the work and thought of one of the most original social scientists in the world today. Students and scholars will find the book invaluable, and general readers will find in this book a clear and masterful guide to the key challenges we face in the years and decades ahead.
About the Author
Michael Mann is Professor of Sociology at UCLA
Reviews
"A very stimulating and thought-provoking book."
Morning Star
"This superb short book deserves the widest readership. A profound understanding of the structures of power in our own age allows Michael Mann, in a brilliant dialogue with John Hall, to offer rich insights into the likely developments of an age that we cannot yet know."
Sir Ian Kershaw, Sheffield University
"Michael Mann has exceeded all of his contemporaries in making sociological sense of Western history, something he has done quite systematically up through the outbreak of the First World War. In these conversations with John A. Hall, he digresses from his nearly completed volume on times since that to cast an insightful gaze on current history, to speculate incisively about the shape of things to come and to draw some major conclusions about history and power."
Alexander Hicks, Emory University
"Wielding his four-dimensional template of power, Mann illuminates the world history of recent times and the foreseeable future. Events become turning points when leading power sources intersect: capitalist crisis with world war in the early 20th century; the stalemate of pluralist politics with ecological crisis in the 21st. Mann displays here in summary strokes the continuing relevance of his grand sociological vision."
Randall Collins, University of Pennsylvania
Book Information
ISBN 9780745653235
Author Michael Mann
Format Paperback
Page Count 180
Imprint Polity Press
Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Weight(grams) 254g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 16mm