This book is bold and ambitious. It charts and explains the development of power relations in the advanced countries of the world over 150 years and interprets this with the aid of a general theory of power in human societies. Readers of my first volume will be familiar by now with my argument that the development of human societies can be explained in terms of the interrelations of four sources of social power – ideological, economic, military, and political (the IEMP model). These sources generate networks of interaction whose boundaries do not coincide. Instead, they overlap, intersect, entwine, and sometimes fuse, in ways that defy simple or unitary explanations of society given by social scientists. More importantly, they also defy the ability of social actors to fully understand their social situation, and it is that uncertainty which makes human action somewhat unpredictable and which perpetually develops social change.

And yet this book is not as big in scope as my other three volumes. Unlike them, it is not global. One enthusiastic reviewer did begin his review of this one with the word “Colossal!” and ended saying “this volume stands alone for its heroic scope, and the depth of its analysis attests to the author's vision and determination” (Snyder, 1995: 167). Yet others were disappointed with what they saw as a narrowing of my scope compared to Volume 1. Here I am resolutely focused from beginning to end on Europe and America.