How do the world's societies differ from each other? What were the reasons for change in the past, and do they help us in predicting change in the future? This challenging text encourages students to ask these and other questions.Chirot emphasizes the fact that societies have to adapt to changing conditions, and that some forms of change help, whereas others impede survival. He explains how states and agriculture combined to create the world's classic civilization. He shows how the UK, a marginal agrarian civilization on the edge of Europe, produced throughout the industrial revolution changes that transformed the world. The last two sections delineate the chronic unsolved problems of the modern era, develop a simplified model of how societies work and how the study of social change can contribute to the resolution of societies' most important problems.The aim of this stimulating and accessible book is to encourage students to understand their society by first comparing it to others, both contemporary and historical. It conveys the crucial fact that change is not just something that happened in the past, but that it will continue, and that it is necessary to evaluate social transformations as they occur because not all of them will yield positive results. While addressing these questions the book also seeks to broaden the knowledge that students have about the many types of human societies that have existed.