Without doubt the most important piece of historical sociology since Weber. Richard Sennett

A modern classic of the first order. Lewis Coser

Elias has all the boldness and sureness of touch of the old masters, of whom he is perhaps the last. Reading his pages one again and again makes the mental note that this or that point is worthy of Max Weber ... One realizes from a book like this that serious sociology must remain dependent on the insightful interpretation of history of just the kind that Elias provides. Bryan Wilson

The most remarkable recent attempt to contain the social and the individual within a unified scheme of sociological analysis. Philip Abrams

Norbert Elias taught and researched at the Universities of Leicester, Ghana, Frankfurt and Bielefeld. At the time of his death in 1990, he was considered to be one of the outstanding social thinkers of our century. His other Blackwell books include Time: An Essay, The Society of Individuals, Involvement and Detachment, The Loneliness of the Dying, Court Society and, with Eric Dunning, Quest for Excitement.