Major new study of European political thought in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Ever since the discovery of Marx's Early Writings, most of the literature concerned with Marx's intellectual development has centred around the so-called gap between the 'young' Marx, who was considered to be a humanist thinker, and the 'older' Marx, who was held to be a determinist with little concern for anything outside his narrow theory of historical materialism. Dr Avineri claims that such a

A selection of Max Weber's most important political writings.

Examines the creation and function of the imagined communities of nationality and the way these communities were in part created by the growth of the nation-state, the interaction between capitalism and printing and the birth of vernacular languages in early modern Europe.

This provocative book argues that, very often, people may benefit from being constrained in their options or from being ignorant.

Theda Skocpol shows how all three combine to explain the origins and accomplishments of social-revolutionary transformations.