There may be "pie in the sky when you die" but how the pie is dished out on the ground has considerable existential relevance. Preface (1997)
Our methods were becoming more sophisticated, but their yield seemed increasingly commonplace. To stem a descent into triviality, I thought, we needed to search out the causes of the present in the past. Preface (1982)
Although I wrote as an anthropologist rather than as a professional historian, I think history matters. It is also important to understand how an why these systems develop and extend their sway over people, and I located the rationale in the ways power and the economy sustain and drive each other on. Preface (1997)