Rough Waters Ahead

Abstract

There are a variety of definitions of the term, handbook. All of them, however, include a reference to factual information on a specific topic or set of topics or instructions dealing with a defined process or set of processes. This generalized and synthesized explanation of what handbooks are certainly applies to Handbook of Revolutions in the 21st Century, edited by Jack Goldstone, Leonid Grinin, and Andrey Korotayev. However, in over one thousand pages, this handbook provides much more than the previous description implies. Not only is the concept of revolution rigorously treated and the theory of revolutions investigated in the opening section of the book, but in the remaining sections of the book, the topics of the history of revolutions, revolutionary waves, revolution in the early twenty-first century, the Arab Spring revolutions, revolutionary movements beyond the Arab Spring, and current and future revolutions are all treated clearly and in depth by a variety of scholars from a diversity of academic specializations. Further, handbooks, often didactic in the extreme, are not known for their insight and creativity; this one will be.