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A respected thinker points the way ahead. "Immanuel Wallerstein has long conceived of social science grandly. He was an innovator of world systems analysis, which portrays societies, sectors within societies, and the very disciplines of the social science as linked, bound, and analytically inseparable: To parse them is to misconceive them. As recent president of the International Sociological Association (1994 to 1998), Wallerstein continued to develop such grand thinking through numerous addresses on the state of the social sciences, capitalism, political justice, and the world. Here, he offers these collectively. He divides them into two topics-the world of capitalism and the world of knowledge. Toward both grand worlds, his thesis is similar: they are in crisis. . . . The scope of his career's thought is remarkable, his expertise impressively broad." Political Science Quarterly This book is nothing short of a state-of-the-world address, delivered by a scholar uniquely suited to the task. Immanuel Wallerstein, one of the most prominent social scientists of our time, documents the profound transformations our world is undergoing. With these transformations, he argues, come equally profound changes in how we understand the world. Wallerstein divides his work between an appraisal of significant recent events and a study of the shifts in thought influenced by those events. The book's first half reviews the major happenings of recent decades--the collapse of the Leninist states, the exhaustion of national liberation movements, the rise of East Asia, the challenges to national sovereignty, the dangers to the environment, the debates about national identity, and the marginalization of migrant populations. Wallerstein places these events and trends in the context of the changing modern world-system as a whole and identifies the historical choices they put before us. The second half of the book takes up current issues in the world of knowledge--the vanishing faith in rationality, the scattering of knowledge activities, the denunciation of Eurocentrism, the questioning of the division of knowledge into science and humanities, and the relation of the search for the true and the search for the good. Wallerstein explores how these questions have arisen from larger social transformations, and why the traditional ways of framing such debates have become obstacles to resolving them. The End of the World As We Know It concludes with a crucial analysis of the momentous intellectual challenges to social science as we know it and suggests possible responses to them. Immanuel Wallerstein is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and director of the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton University. Among his numerous books are The Modern World-System (1974, 1980, 1989), Unthinking Social Science (1991), and After Liberalism (1995).

Sometimes called the Czech Bukowski, and more widely known by the epithet “Magor” (which translates roughly to “fool” or “madman”), Ivan Jirous was one of the most significant figures in the Czechoslovak cultural underground of the 1960s through the '80s.  Although trained as an art historian and famed for his poetry, Jirous was convinced that it was actually rock and roll music that held the greatest potential to enact change under the repressive regime of communist Czechoslovakia. He designated himself as the artistic director of the dissident rock band The Plastic People of the Universe, legendary for psychedelic music that was heavily influenced by nonconformist Western acts like Frank Zappa and The Velvet Underground. Alongside other figures from the musical underground, Jirous was arrested in 1976—the second of five prison sentences he would serve for his dissent—which helped bring about the landmark civil rights initiative known as Charter 77. In the wake of 1989’s Velvet Revolution, Váсlav Havel—the first president of the Czech Republic—was to say that Jirous and his unwavering commitment to liberation played “no small part” in casting off the yoke of Soviet oppression.

End of the World is the first major collection in English of the works of this legendary Czech “madman.” Although nicknamed for his aggressive and rebellious behavior, Jirous’s writing reveal a refined, sophisticated, and even tender sensibility. Translated in part by Paul Wilson, an original member of the Plastic People, the book gathers his poems and letters from prison, as well as his book-length prose work, The True Story of the Plastic People, alongside critical essays on Jirous’s life and work. End of the World is an ideal introduction to the raucous writer who playwright Tom Stoppard referred to as one of the most interesting personalities in modern Czech history.
 

Everyday Apocalypse recovers the root meaning of the term apocalypse (revelation) to use the concept as a lens through which art and other acts of creative nonviolence that often go unseen may be brought into focus. Interweaving an examination of popular culture with ancient insight and contemporary political awareness, Dark uses the concept of the apocalyptic to celebrate epiphanies about the world we live in and the meaning of human experience within it. Since its original publication in 2002, the book has become a deeply influential text among two generations of intellectual evangelical Christians who find themselves at odds with their families and communities over issues of politics and culture, particularly in the South.

This revised edition of the book includes a foreword by Hanif Abdurraqib, an extensive afterword, updates in light of the passage of time since its publication, and new insights from the author, whose outspokenness has placed him outside of circles in which he was once supported and celebrated.