In "The Riddle of the Modern World," Alan Macfarlane "seeks to find the sources of English exceptionalism that ushered in the modern world, looking through the eyes of a number of witnesses from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries who have thought about these sources in a comparative framework. The first of these authors is Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755), who lived around the time England was breaking away from the European herd and establishing the institutions that would bring about the Industrial Revolution. The next is Adam Smith (1723-90), who lived just at the cusp of the changeover from an agrarian economy to an industrial mineral-energy-using economy. The third is Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59), who lived when modernity had become manifest both in England and in its offshoot, the United States of America. The fourth is the contemporary sociologist and anthropologist Ernest Gellner (1920-95)."

"This strategy is an interesting one, and Macfarlane's thumbnail sketches of the lives and though of these thinkers are cogent and concise. I learned a great deal from his discussion of Montesquieu, and I am sure that readers who do not know the writings of the other thinkers discussed in the book will likewise find much of interest in it."

-From "The Independent Review," Fall 2002