Globalization has brought with it many difficult and contradictory phenomena: violence, deep national insecurities, religious divisions and individual insecurities. This book takes a critical look at three key areas - globalism, nationalism, and state-terror - to confront common mythologies and identify the root causes of the problems we face. Too many commentators still argue that globalization is predominantly a neo-liberal economic phenomenon; that nation-states are on the way out, and that terror is something that primarily comes from below. Global Matrix exposes the limitations of this...

In May 1968, France stood on the verge of full-blooded revolution. Here a rhythmic, vivid evocation from eyewitness Angelo Quattrocchi is complemented by Tom Nairn s cool and elegant appraisal to tell the astonishing story of those heady days. Paris is a seething battlefield of barricades, burning cars and CS gas. De Gaulle s riot police publicly inform him that their loyalty can no longer be taken for granted. Meanwhile students and millions of young striking workers on the streets raise ideas that had previously been the sole province of radical philosophers: To forbid is forbidden; Be...

This work posits that nation-building movements from 1750 to 1990 have saved the world from imperial barbarism. Contrary to many gloomy prognoses following the Soviet and Yugoslav collapses, Nairn claims that the chaos feared by so many observers is neither endless nor one-sidedly destructive.