Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives (Book).

The article focuses on the book "Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives," by Talcott Parsons. Readers who may hope that this will provide them with a simplified approach to the work of Parsons will be disappointed; his style is as turgid as ever, making this a doubtful member of a series of books for beginners. Nevertheless it is a shorter route to Parsonian ideas than most, and is much more rooted in empirical data than his other books. The societies under examination do not include those of modern Europe, which will be dealt with in a later volume.