Why am I passionate about this?
My expertise comes through my work and degrees as an undergraduate, Master’s, and Phd student, in history and comparative historical sociology. It is demonstrated mainly in my two books, one on the Spanish, Yugoslav, and Greek Civil Wars, the other on Anti-Leftist Politics, listed above. It also comes through my teaching, which includes the entire world history sequence, in addition to numerous specialized courses and seminars. My passion could be described as a love for the world and its peoples, and a loathing for systems and politics of inequality and injustice.
Philip's book list on modern world history and politics
Why did Philip love this book?
This book is both a soaring and substantive comparative analysis of early modern social classes and state formation in Europe, the Ottoman Empire, China, and Japan.
For me and many others, it has been indispensable for understanding world power politics and history from the early modern era to the present. Methodologically, it is a genuine tour de force. Anderson’s scholarly output generally is in a class by itself.
1 author picked Lineages of the Absolutist State as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Forty years after its original publication, Lineages of the Absolutist State remains an exemplary achievement in comparative history. Picking up from where its companion volume, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, left off, Lineages traces the development of Absolutist states in the early modern period from their roots in European feudalism, and assesses their various trajectories. Why didn't Italy develop into an Absolutist state in the same, indigenous way as the other dominant Western countries, namely Spain, France and England? On the other hand, how did Eastern European countries develop into Absolutist states similar to those of the West, when their…