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Many authors who discuss the idea of globalization see it as continuing pre-established paths of development of modern societies. Postmodernist writers, by contrast, have lost sight of the importance of historical narrative altogether. This work argues that neither group is able to recognize the new era which stares us in the face. A history of the present needs an explicit epochal theory to understand the transition to the global age. When globality displaces modernity there is a general decentring of state, government, economy, culture and community. The book calls for a recasting of the theory of such institutions and the relations between them. It finds an open potential for society to recover its abiding significance in the face of the declining nation state. At the same time, a new kind of citizenship is emerging. The book should provoke both radicals and conservatives. Its scholarship ranges widely across the social sciences and humanities.