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Explaining the Irrationality of War

Drawing on eight years of comparative-historical research, Michael Mann overturns accepted wisdom on the bellicosity of democracies, the economic grounds for war and the rational calculations of states in a rivalrous world system.

Family Resemblances

Michael Mann on Peter Baldwin, The Narcissism of Minor Differences. Beneath the distinctions commonly perceived, do Europe and America fundamentally resemble one another?

Globalization and September 11

How far might the current conjuncture alter received notions of globalization? Michael Mann considers the pattern of ‘ostracizing imperialism’ and the springs of Islamic resistance to it, amid wider shifts in the sources of social power—military, economic, political, ideological—at the threshold of the new century.

The Dark Side of Democracy: The Modern Tradition of Ethnic and Political Cleansing

“The twentieth century’s death-toll through genocide is somewhere over sixty million and still rising. Yet most scholars and laypersons alike have preferred to focus on more salubrious topics. If they think about genocide at all, they view it as an unfortunate interruption of the real structural tendencies of . . .” read more

As the Twentieth Century Ages

“Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Extremes deserves to repeat the success of its predecessors, The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital and The Age of Empire. In what is presumably his final volume in this series, Hobsbawm’s vivid style and humanist vision again illuminate an enormous range . . .” read more

Sources of Variation in Working-Class Movements in Twentieth-Century Europe

“David Lockwood’s classic essay ‘Sources of Variation in Working-Class Images of Society’ (1966) distinguished three ideal-typical images of society found among workers: proletarian, deferential and privatized. Lockwood was firstly reminding us of the sheer variety of workers’ beliefs, from classconscious proletarians, to conservative status-conscious deferentials, to the calculative, . . .” read more

The Roots and Contradictions of Modern Militarism

“I define militarism as a set of attitudes and social practices which regards war and the preparation for war as a normal and desirable social activity. This is a broader definition than is common among scholars. It qualifies people other than John Wayne as militarists. But in an . . .” read more