This extraordinary book presents a refreshing and innovative overview of the changes to the global system over the last 5000 years. Featuring renowned contributors - each specialists in their field - this is the only volume to offer so co-ordinated a study of continuity and change in the global social, economic and political system. Key areas covered include:
* International Political Economy - Robert A. Denemark
* Archaeology - Jonathan Freidman
* Economic development - Andre Gunder Frank
* History - George Modelski
* Sociology - Christopher Chase-Dunn

This text provides a fundamental starting point for the study of continuity and change in the global, social, economic and political system over the longest historical term. Bringing together interdisciplinary scholars, the book considers the nature of social continuity back through history, resulting in a book which cuts across boundaries in social science and deals with at least 5000 years of the human past in a global perspective. It offers a co-ordinated picture of the issues of the prospects for the unified study of world system history. The kind of transdisciplinary co-operation needed...

The idea that political and economic power moves in coordinated cycles has long intrigued political scientists and political economists, for if a pattern exists in the rise and fall of international political power, a model explaining this pattern gains predictive qualities. In Leading Sectors and World Powers, George Modelski and William R. Thompson venture beyond previous attempts to explain why major powers rise, fall, and fight about their changing status to establish an explicit connection between war, economic innovation, and world leadership. They argue that surges in economic...