Immanuel Wallerstein's highly influential, multi-volume opus, The Modern World-System, is one of this century's greatest works of social science. An innovative, panoramic reinterpretation of global history, it traces the emergence and development of the modern world from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

"I can say without hesitation that this is the finest book of analytic history that I have read in the past ten years. That Europe had formed a world-economy around herself historians knew. But only in general. What they had never thought about with the keenness and intelligence of I. Wallerstein's thought is that this entity provides a new framework for the subject of European history, that it is compelling, a new explanation, a new classification, indeed a revolutionary one, of received knowledge and current thought."

—Fernand Braudel, author of The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II

“It isn't just history or economics or sociology or political science. It is all of these in combination and thus places all of these fields on a new plane of understanding, It is a book that people will have to deal with, argue with, cite, learn by in order to make their own points....In sum, this is a most impressive work. I can hardly wait for the other volumes."

—Eric R. Wolf, author of Europe and the People without History

"A remarkable book. The author has a theory and uses it to explain the structure and course of public events in Europe and its trans-oceanic annexes in the sixteenth century. The effect is dazzling and dizzying."