The Making of the Modern World: Encounters

By Alan Macfarlane

The question of how the modern world, composed of new technologies, new political and social systems, new ideologies and new relations between economy, politics, society and thought, has emerged against all the odds is the largest one that is asked by historians and social scientists. I have been wrestling with this puzzle for half a life-time and written a number of books about it. One part of the quest has been to interrogate major thinkers who have addressed the same question over the last 300 years and I have already published studies of Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, De Tocqueville, Fukuzawa and Maitland. In the encounters or shorter essays in this volume I look at the life and works of the following: David Hume, Henry Maine, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Norman Jacobs, Ernest Gellner, Andre Beteille, Louis Dumont, tony Wrigley, Ben Pomeranz, Susan Hanley and Keith Thomas for further clues.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1490396004
• ISBN13: 9781490396002
• Release Date: June 2013
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 1.51 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 0.7" x 7.0"