Often these resentments come together in particular individuals who come to power as authoritarian nationalists (such as President Donald J. Trump in the United States and others in Brazil, Hungary, and Poland), and in movements such as Brexit in the United Kingdom, where a slim majority of citizens voted to leave the European Union. Since then, earthshaking events, including the COVID-19 epidemic (2019–2023), Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and the latest assessments of the growing dangers of global warming, led me to conclude that a new edition was necessary to place those developments into the long-term global context of Origins. Doing so also led me to re-envision much of parts III and IV of chapter 6, those addressing the post–World War II era. In addition to new sections on COVID and Ukraine, I have added new sections on the China Shock; the financial crisis of 2008 and the ensuing great recession; deaths of despair; opposition to globalization, deglobalization and re-nationalization; and “a conjuncture.” The conclusion to chapter 6 is new.

Without my family, I would not be the scholar I am. My mother and father, neither of whom graduated high school, nonetheless loved reading and talking, and together they gave me the support and encouragement to follow my dreams out of a small town in northern Wisconsin to the University of Wisconsin. My son Robert received his degree in environmental sciences, is a professional freshwater resource geologist, and reads and critiques my drafts. Joyce Kaufman continues to offer companionship, love, and support, knowing what it means to be a publishing scholar at a college that values teaching effectiveness first and foremost. And as did our faithful and beloved dog companions Budd, Rembrandt, and Stanton, Seger now reminds me to look forward to each new day.

it is to point out that history is living and relevant to current concerns, not the “dead hand of the past,” as some might see it. Both new scholarship and new issues and problems can prompt us to re-examine the past and to rewrite history to take account of changes in both. That way the stories we tell about the past continue to be relevant and helpful to us in the present. For if they weren’t, what would be the point? We need all the help we can get, and historical perspective is an essential aid to living in and through the present to a better future