The object of this book is to is to explain - rather than simply narrate - the remarkable or rather unique set of events that constitute modern history from the Industrial Revolution to the beginnings of the twenty-first century.

This fascinating book provides a fully integrated explanation of the history of the modern world. Although the sheer complexity of society requires that it be studied from the standpoint of several social sciences (including Economics, Political Science, Sociology and Anthropology), using only the tools of just one of these is an obstacle to understanding the whole society, where social, economic and political conditions are interacting all the time. The book explains why and how modern communities have evolved from their pre-modern, Ancien regime, states in the early eighteenth century,...