From France in the 1790s to Vietnam in the 1970s, social revolutions have been rare but profoundly significant events in world history. Why did social revolutions occur in some countries but not others? How did prerevolutionary regimes enter crisis? Harvard University professor Theda Skocpol's book, States and Social Revolutions, provides a new framework for analyzing the causes, conflicts, and outcomes of revolutions. This study combines innovative theoretical approaches with a deep, rigorous comparative historical analysis of the French Revolution from 1787 to the early 1800s, the Russian Revolution from 1917 to the 1930s, and the Chinese Revolution from 1911 to the 1960s. Skocpol demonstrates how the confluence of factors—state structures, foreign policy and economic forces, and class relations—helps explain the origins and outcomes of social revolutions. Believing that existing theories of revolution, both Marxist and non-Marxist, are insufficient to explain their actual historical patterns, the author calls for a new perspective on revolutions. Above all, she insists that states, viewed as organizations exercising control and coercion, potentially autonomous from class interests and class control, must become the central element in explaining revolutions.