'A Romanian sociologist in Germany, taking up Karl Marx and Max Weber on the issue of global inequalities, should be a reason for joy for many sociologists outside of Europe and, why not, in Europe itself. Manuela Boatcă’s argument comes loud and clear in the first line: global inequality for the media is news, and for the social scientist in the global North is new. To counter the double-blind, Boatcă brings the feelings and the eyes of a sociologist from former Eastern Europe and she adds to it the former Third World perspective on coloniality and decoloniality. It is geopolitics of knowledge at its best. A must-read for generations to come and all those interested in overcoming the imperial and institutional limits of the social sciences.' Walter D. Mignolo, Duke University, USA 'An exciting contribution to the debate about the modern world - its past, present, and future. A truly comprehensive review and critique of the literature as a mode of demonstrating that it is both essential and possible to move beyond Occidentalism. Future discussions (in particular of both Marx and Weber) will have to deal with this summation and this call to go beyond where we have all been, both in historical reality and in our failures to analyse this reality usefully.' Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University, USA