Charles S. Maier is Leverett Saltonstall Research Professor of History at Harvard University. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Council on Foreign Relations, he has written a number of award-winning books, including Recasting Bourgeois Europe, The Unmasterable Past, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany, and Once Within Borders.
<b>Maier</b> is particularly good on the ways that improved communications and transportation could facilitate new forms of state power, but also help to provoke revolution everywhere from Mexico to China to Russia.--David A. Bell New Republic (10/07/2013)