This is a stunning achievement by a first-rate scholar and social theorist. Highly recommended.

Choice Reviews

[Turner's] book is an excellent contribution to the theoretical literature on social evolution. Turner has an excellent feel for how the process of long-term social evolution works, both descriptively and in terms of the key casual forces. His book should be read far and wide.

American Journal of Sociology

Using innovative methods, concepts, and notations developed in his earlier works, and eschewing a 'prime mover,' Turner outlines a cogent and comprehensive macro-level theory of social organization and social change. Avoiding the pitfalls of earlier functional analyses of social institutions and social order, the theory identifies the key 'macro-dynamic' forces that shape and alter the 'institutional order,' and it proposes general models of their impact, and of the patterned interrelationships, and mutual causality among the key institutions of societies.

Patrick D. Nolan, University of South Carolina