Preface/2016 Edition -- Introduction-Social Theory: Its Uses and Pleasures -- Modernity's Classical Age: 1848-1919 -- The Two Sides of Society -- Split Lives in the Modern World -- Social Theories and World Conflict: 1919-1945 -- Action and Knowledge in a Troubled World -- Unavoidable Dilemmas -- The Golden Moment: 1945-1963 -- The Golden Age -- Doubts and Reservations -- Others Object -- Will the Center Hold? 1963-1979 -- Experiments at Renewal and Reconstruction -- Breaking with Modernity -- After Modernity: 1979-2001 -- The Idea of the Postmodern and Its Critics -- Reactions and Alternatives -- New Cultural Theories after Modernity -- Global Realities in an Uncertain Century -- Global Uncertainties -- Rethinking the Past that Haunts the Future -- Social Theory at the Limits of the Social -- Notes to Accompany "The New Mestiza" (Gloria Anzaldua, 1987)