This book is incredible in the way that it illustrates a world that we've lived in, yet never looked at quite like this. Gran explains various countries roads to the present. This read will challenge the way that you think of the world. Highly reccommended

Few works have successfully attempted to compare and explain world history by showing how states form and use intellectuals and notions of caste to maintain rule and hegemony. Through an original approach Gran succeeds in proposing the use of four distinctive paradigms of modern state formation, each with unique characteristics, but more importantly sharing features that show up in various states. By breaking with the Eurocentric model, and the elite state centered view of history, Gran proposes that development in Russia, the "Russian Road" of development, shares characteristics of a weak middle class and a tendency to alternating between liberal phases and autocratic rule in its hegemony of rule. The Russian Road of state formation and hegemony shares characteristics with similar modern state formations in Iraq, Turkey and other states.

Italy, on the other hand, provides an example of "Italian Road" formations with its inherent contradictions of regional conflict, a weakly integrated and 'underdeveloped' rural Southern population, which the North can only reach out to by appealing to the traditional Southern intellectuals, clergy and landowning interests. Italy shares characteristics with modern state formation in India and Mexico which experience a similar problem of regional struggle and contradictions. Gran proposes two other major paradigms of modern state formation: the tribal ethnic state, of which he analyzes Zaire and Albania as notable examples, and the bourgeois democratic state, of which his analysis of the United States and Britain are especially insightful for his treatment of the notion of race as caste in these states. Gran expands on the sociology and interpretive framework provided by Antonio Gramsci and draws on comparative analyses of Stuart Hall for Britain, or Partha Chaterjee for India, Eugene Genovese for the problem of the South in U.S. History. Gran's originality is as thought provoking as his methodology which offers challenging essays for each region and paradigm, by analyzing its historiography and the organization of culture as a component of hegemony. This book offers some examples of struggles of subaltern groups and non elites in the making of their own histoyr.

Yet, more work could be done on aspects of counterhegemonic struggle by subaltern groups, and as Gran alludes, the analysis of those states which combine features of several types of his paradigms. As Gran suggests, for example, Egypt offers features of the Italian Road in its internal regional conflicts and the pitted struggles of traditional intellectuals with the modern state, but also displays features of the Russian Road in some state policies.

Spain for example offers contradictions seen in the Italian Road, the clash of traditional intellectuals, and the conservative Catholics, and Catholic Reform, Opus Dei, in contrast with the the needs of the modern organic intellectuals and the problems of regional absorption and struggles. In Spain, the features of regional autonomy offers parallels with the Russian Road problematic of breakaway ethnic struggles, and language and education policy, the Basques and the Catalans, for example. Other combined models may be further analyzed in Japan or Latin American states for example. This is a work that provokes thought. It offers a watershed of ideas that is topical and disturbingly shakes our consciousness of regions that have evaded analysis, as in Albania and Zaire. His essays on the limits of Russian and other states centered historiography is especially insightful. Beyond Eurocentrism may be used as a manual of how to begin the analysis of our times and the struggles of ordinary people in different regions and states.