埃里克·R.沃尔夫（1923—1999年），出生于奥地利维也纳，1940年赴美，曾参与第二次世界大战；战争结束后于1951年获得美国哥伦比亚大学人类学博士学位，曾先后任教于伊利诺伊大学、耶鲁大学、芝加哥大学等著名学府。埃里克·R.沃尔夫是当代著名的人类学家，著作颇丰，知名作品有《农民社会》（Peasants）、《二十世纪的农民战争》（Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century）等。本书被认为是他的代表作。

译者贾士蘅，台湾大学历史系学士、考古人类学硕士，曾担任美国丹佛美术博物馆研究员，翻译作品有《英国史》《英国社会人类学》《英国社会史》《历史的再思考》《帝国的年代》《英国工人阶级的形成》等书。

"Wolf's intention is to show that European expansion not only transformed the historical trajectory of non-European societies but also reconstituted their historical accounts of their societies before European intervention. . . . His historical sweep and analytic breadth are astounding, and he gives approximately equal weight to historical 'winners' and 'losers.'" --Michael S. Kimmel, American Journal of Sociology

"Wolf's intention is to explain the development and nature of the chains of cause and consequence which linked populations in the post-1400 world. The outcome is a tightly structured and elegant book." --Oceania

"The work of a powerful theoretical intelligence, but one informed by a lived sense of social realities." --Times Literary Supplement

"In this big and important book, Eric Wolf begins and ends with the assertion that anthropology must pay more attention to history. . . . It is with pleasure, then, that one reads a critical analysis that rejects pseudo-historical oppositions and explores with such care the historical processes by which primitive and peasant pasts have become a fundamentally altered primitive, peasant, and proletarian present." --William Roseberry, Dialectical Anthropology

"Wolf has created a history of connection rather than one of segregation. . . . This absorbing and stimulating book . . . provides a convincing and, dare I say, new perspective. . . . By emphasizing a common past, Wolf moves away from weary polarities of active 'white' centre and passive 'non-white' periphery and suggests both a more complex and a more informed sense of the relationship between Europe and the rest of the world."--Ben Jay, European Update

"Wolf's empirical knowledge is exceptionally wide. . . . He relies on a skillful selection of phenomena in time and space that are reasonably representative of the totality. . . . The book is very well written and with a profoundly human touch."--Magnus Mörner, Ethnos