This book is a magnum opus that makes sense of the past, explains the present, and lets us peer into the future. Here is an overview of what this magnum opus addresses by unpacking complexities, identifying essences, contrasting conflicting positions, mapping interconnections, and ultimately creating a new whole in the form of an integrated understanding of our postmodern era and its future. The book presents and explains:

• • four stages of knowledge creation;

• • interconnections among and across micro, meso, and macro arenas of action; and

• • how to integrate social science theory, empirical scholarship, policy implications and options, and evaluation research.

The book provides:

• • genuine interdisciplinary knowledge integrated across all of the social sciences, breaking down academic silos while identifying crosscutting themes;

• • supporting evidence from a full range of social science methods and findings from surveys, in- depth case studies, big data sets, comparative analyses, international and cross- cultural conclusions, and a full range of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed/ multiple methods across fields of inquiry; and

• • insights generated by triangulating and integrating basic social science knowledge and applied social science findings with social science theory.

The book ensures relevance to problems and solutions by

• • attending to both popular and widely disseminated sources and resources as well as less accessible scholarly publications and resources; and

• • laying a foundation with the works of great social science pioneers, creating a structural framework with contributions of eminent twentieth- century social scientists, and connecting these classic and enduring breakthroughs in societal understanding with contemporary and leading- edge researchers, theorists, and scholars of the twenty- first century.

To appreciate the dimensions, scale, and significance of this magnum opus, its accomplishments and contributions, consider for a moment how siloed, specialized, fragmented, and polarized institutions are of higher education, public policy, philanthropy, the nonprofit sector, international agencies, and media outlets, to name but a few prominent examples. Our world is filled with trivia, day- to- day sensationalism, celebrity punditry, constant tweets about the mundane, and ever- crescendoing political noise and academic debates all made indecipherable by our short attention spans and vulnerability to selective perception, the confidence heuristic (believing ever more deeply what we hear repeated over and over again), boredom, and compassion fatigue.