Benedict Anderson's *Imagined Communities*, perhaps the most important work of political science published in the last 20 years, brings historical good sense and a panoply of meticulously organized facts to bear on the central problem of 20th-century history: namely, the growth and spread of nationalist sentiments in places that did not previously permit such for *several* reasons. Anderson's analysis "undoes" several commonplaces about the nation-state, chief among them that the concept originated in Europe: he locates the critical "fusion" of people and state as occurring with the anti-colonial movement around Simon Bolivar in 19th century Latin America, rather than the earlier movement for independence of the British colonies which formed the United States.

However, to Anderson's mind the character of one of the modern world's more curious institutions is not entirely without import for understanding nationalist movements, as they almost without exception employ concepts of territorial and cultural integrity which did not exist prior to colonial regimentation: the scope and extent of today's India has more to do with the British Raj than the Moghuls. But perhaps this displacement is in truth somewhat not to the taste of contemporary "interrogators" of the intersection to truth and power, and the art of Anderson's book consists in his leaving the question of national unity unsolved. To my mind one of the most telling instances of democratic sentiment on hand, and a book whose way with you is so short on account of its often-tortured verbiage: gems such as this have other uses, and I can imagine almost no use for this book.