Extracts from reviews:
Graeme Donald Snooks is a prolific author who does not shy away from big subjects. After The Dynamic Society: Exploring the Sources of Global Change (London and New York: Routledge, 1996) and The Ephemeral Civilization: Exploding the Myth of Social Evolution (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), this is his third ambitious book in as many years. They in fact are all part of one big research project; to such an extent that I fear that this book cannot really be appreciated, nor even fully understood, when seen as a work unto itself.
Writing about the laws of history is not every scholar's cup of tea. More than a century ago [Snooks tells us], Buckle remarked that he who does will meet with little sympathy, and will find few to help him. In this respect, Snooks concludes, nothing has changed. He sees no reason, however, to abandon the project. Laws of history must exist: if they did not, social life would be impossible. They only remain to be discovered. . . .
-- Peer Vries, The Journal of Economic History, vol. 60, no. 4, December 2000, p. 1181–2.
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