Modernity, development, and progress have long been viewed as universal ideals. Today, however, botched experiments in nation-building, democracy, industrialization and urbanization visibly scar much of the world. As once happened in Europe, the wider embrace of revolutionary politics, mass movements and technology has cast billions adrift in a literally demoralized world, uprooted from tradition but still far from modernity. A powerful argument about the roots of the current global disorder.