"A penetrating, illuminating, and gratifyingly concise attempt to bring some order out of chaos. . . . This is one of the handful of books published each year that should be read by every person concerned with man's social and political behavior. . . . The book is as much indebted to current thought in anthropology, economics, sociology, and social psychology as to that in political science and its reliance upon the insights of classical political philosophers such as Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau is also profound and explicitly stated. It is in his ability to combine meaningfully a large number of divergent theories and philosophies and to direct them toward the explanation of a particular phenomenon that Johnson is especially successful."
         -- Charles F. MacCormack ,Journal of International Affairs