In this major new work, Fareed Zakaria masterfully investigates eras that have shattered and shaped humanity. Four such periods hold profound lessons for today. First, in seventeenth-century Netherlands a series of transformations made that tiny land the richest in the world and created modern politics. The 'Glorious Revolution' in Britain showed that major political change could happen peacefully. Then the French Revolution, a dramatic decade and a half that devoured its ideological children and left a bloody legacy that haunts us to this day. Finally, the mother of all revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, which catapulted Britain and the U.S. to global dominance and created the modern world. Against these paradigm-shifting historical eras, Zakaria describes our current situation, unpacking the four revolutions we are living through now: in globalization, technology identity and geopolitics.

As few public intellectuals can, Zakaria combines intellectual range, deep historical insight and uncanny prescience to reframe and illuminate a turbulent present.