The Project-State and Its Rivals

“Maier offers an alternative account of the last century, looking at how a wide range of actors tried to harness industrial modernity in the pursuit of power and material interests… [He] weaves a narrative about the explosive interplay of economic privilege and political grievance.”—G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs

“A very refreshing take on a history I thought I knew well.”—J. Bradford Delong, Harvard Magazine

“An intriguing, sophisticated book about the relationships between the evolution of the modern nation-state and the concurrent forces of capitalism, popular politics, socialist responses, and bureaucratic governance. This is a deep and clever work, the culmination of an erudite historian’s long grappling with humankind’s mixed record of progress and failure.”—Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

“Charles Maier has produced a brilliantly innovative reconceptualization of twentieth-century history in terms of the interaction between states, resources, and markets. He sets a bold agenda for future thinking about the shape of the past one hundred years.”—Harold James, author of The War of Words: A Glossary of Globalization

“A true history of the present. The Project-State and Its Rivals is a powerful, insightful, and penetrating analysis of the major shifts in global order and social dynamics across the past century. There are few historians today who can venture to undertake such a tour d’horizon with equal confidence and expertise as Maier.”—Sebastian Conrad, author of What Is Global History?