** Introduction

** I. Take Me to Your Leader: The Politics of Alien Invasion

** II. Ze Germans: A State-Making Technology

** III. Save Me from Yourself: The Statist Spread of Salvation Religions

** IV. Sleeper States and Imperial Imaginaries: Authority’s Afterlife and Reincarnation

** V. The Modern State: A Revolutionary Hybrid

** VI. Zomia: A Topography of Positionality

** VII. Chiefdoms and Megacommunities: On the Stability of Non-State Hierarchies

** VIII. They Ain’t Got No Class: Surpluses and the State

** IX. All in the Family: Kinship and Statehood

** X. Building the Walls Higher: From Raiding to Warfare

** XI. Staff and Sun: A New Symbolic Order

** XII. A Forager’s Mecca: Dreams of Power

** XIII. From Clastres to Cairo to Kobane: Learning from States

** Bibliography

** Index

*** Publisher notes: