large claims, ventures predictions, puts ideologies and disciplines in their place.Here is someone who is not afraid of grand narratives.Within the large scope of Wallerstein' s interests, certain issues show his talents to greatest advantage. He has a fi ne sense of the dynamics of the world system, especially the interplay of classes and political ideologies. This is well shown in the address Wallerstein gave to the South African Sociological Association (Chapter 2 in this book) where he surveys the history of "anti-systemic movements," linking the story of colonial struggles with the story of class struggle in the metropole, in a way only the broad world-system perspective allows. Wallerstein goes on to offer a fourfold characterization of the present crisis of the system, which he sees as destabilized simultaneously by the approaching end of the rural labor pool, ecological crisis, democratization, and the decline of state power.At its best, Wallerstein' s approach produces intoxicatingly wide perspectives combined with moments of sharp insight. I loved his brilliant short essay (pp. 63-6), embedded within an address on states and sovereignty, on why a genuinely free market is bad for capitalism-only a strong state, and various forms of monopoly, make quick accumulation possible. (Though Wallerstein doesn't use the example, Bill Gates and Microsoft make his case perfectly.) When he turns to the world of knowledge, he is equally insightful and acerbic on the mad proliferation of specialties and sub-fi elds within the old framework of "disciplines."But at other points, and the other issues, Wallerstein' s touch is unsure. His idea of politics, for instance, remains largely within the framework of class struggle and he has diffi culty grasping other forces. Gender relations, for instance, are pretty much outside Wallerstein' s understanding of the world system. While he mentions feminism (especially as a challenge to sociology), his treatment of it is sketchy and the coverage arbitrary. Cultural politics are marginal in his world-view (except as political ideologies), and his account of "cultural studies" (pp. 215-6) is thin. It' s not surprising, therefore, to fi nd his treatment of postmodernism and deconstruction also thin and disdainful. This is a signifi cant weakness, I think, in Wallerstein' s survey of intellectual challenges to sociology. For an author concerned to assess the state of knowledge across all the disciplines, it is a little disturbing to fi nd that Wallerstein takes not the slightest notice of Lyotard' s famous and immensely infl uential essay of twenty years ago on the same topic, "The Postmodern Condition."When the different essays are put together, as they are in this book, there do seem to be some inconsistencies. In Chapter 1, a speech delivered in 1996, Wallerstein usefully reviews the different forms of Eurocentrism in social science and argues for transcending it. But in Chapter 15, the presidential address of 1998, Wallerstein not only recalls but emphasizes and elaborates the utte...