No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945–1991. By Jeff Goodwin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 428p. $60.00 cloth, $23.00 paper.

Extract

“Do we need yet another comparative study of revolutions?” (p. 5; emphasis in original), Jeff Goodwin asks in this eagerly (and long) anticipated and important new book, which is destined to influence scholars in several disciplines and fields. The answer, as this volume makes abundantly clear, is “yes,” and few will be disappointed with this well-written, accessible, and compelling volume, the most nuanced and sophisticated argument yet for the state-centered (but, pace Goodwin, not structuralist; see p. 53) approach, and worthy heir to Theda Skocpol's (1979) still paradigmatic States and Social Revolutions. But therein lies the rub: Rather than the first book of the (putative) emergent fourth generation of scholars of revolution(s), this is likely the last of the third generation. Goodwin concedes he has “largely moved beyond” (p. xvi) the perspective he articulates here, and he, along with John Foran, is one of the most likely suspects to produce the next paradigmatic statement on revolutions. This, then, would seem the third generation's crowning glory; given the long gestation period and the prolific Goodwin's many and impressive contributions to matters revolutionary, this is almost more a legend than a book.