"Another <i>chef d'oeuvre</i> from Beck - simultaneously a bold overview and a most detailed map of the world we have made and are made by. And the fullest to-date presentation of the idea of "second modernity": that of the pressures to rationalize the effects of rationalization which will dominate our individual and collective concerns and efforts for the years to come. A supreme exercise in restoring to view the lost link between biography and history, individual life and its global setting: an essential reading for everyone trying to see form and logic in the increasingly confused and shapeless experience." <i>Zygmunt Bauman, University of Leeds</i> <p>"The state without enemies is a step already on the way to the global risk society of what Beck calls our "second modernity". This book has raised - among scholars and politicians - considerable controversy in Germany, and will no doubt do so in the English-speaking world." <i>Scott Lash, Lancaster University</i></p>