"A very stimulating and thought-provoking book." Morning Star "This superb short book deserves the widest readership. A profound understanding of the structures of power in our own age allows Michael Mann, in a brilliant dialogue with John Hall, to offer rich insights into the likely developments of an age that we cannot yet know." Sir Ian Kershaw, Sheffield University "Michael Mann has exceeded all of his contemporaries in making sociological sense of Western history, something he has done quite systematically up through the outbreak of the First World War. In these conversations with John A. Hall, he digresses from his nearly completed volume on times since that to cast an insightful gaze on current history, to speculate incisively about the shape of things to come and to draw some major conclusions about history and power." Alexander Hicks, Emory University "Wielding his four-dimensional template of power, Mann illuminates the world history of recent times and the foreseeable future. Events become turning points when leading power sources intersect: capitalist crisis with world war in the early 20th century; the stalemate of pluralist politics with ecological crisis in the 21st. Mann displays here in summary strokes the continuing relevance of his grand sociological vision." Randall Collins, University of Pennsylvania