'A brilliant inquiry into culture and society over some seven centuries, Mary Evans explores the origins and trajectories of modernity from the Reformation through the Enlightenment to the contemporary period. Her intellectual control of complex ideas and diverse forms of evidence is consistently impressive. Exploring various pessimistic, dystopian strands in European perspectives on modernity by Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber and Theodor Adorno, she defends a balanced view of both the negative and positive consequences of modernization. This is historical sociology at its best: judicious, theoretically informed, carefully crafted, grounded in empirical research, and above all intellectually clever. "A Short History of Society" will prove to be a valuable companion to the student who needs a concise scholarly and sociological overview of modernity' - Bryan Turner, National University of Singapore."A Short History of Society" is a concise account of the emergence of modern western society. It looks at how successive generations have understood and explained the world in which they lived, and examines significant events since the Enlightenment that have led to the development of society as we know it today. The book spans the period 1500 to the present day and discusses the social world in terms of both its politics and its culture. This book is ideal for undergraduate students in the social sciences who are perplexed by the myriad of events and theories with which their courses are concerned, and who need a historical perspective on the changes that shaped the contemporary world.

瑪麗•伊萬絲Mary Evans

社會學傢，倫敦政治經濟學院（LSE）榮譽教授，任職於性彆研究係。伊萬絲專注於探索性彆和階層結構在現代社會曆程中的角色，並且擅長分析文學作品的社會效應。她的曆史寫作緻力於為被“隱匿於曆史”的女性發聲，在曆史大事中有意納入豐富的女性視角，令人耳目一新。伊萬絲的作品包括《簡•奧斯汀與國傢》《愛情:一個不浪漫的討論》《性彆與社會理論》等。