What is the world of the twenty-first century like now that the centrality of the West can no longer be taken for granted? How were the societies and cultures of today's world together with their interconnections forged, and what is driving human society in our times? In short, what is the state of the world today as we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century?

This is the first book to deal with planetary human society as a whole. It is a beginner's guide to the world after the West and after globalization, compact, portable and jargon-free.

It lays bare the sociocultural geology of the world, its major civilizations, its historical waves of globalization, its family-sex-gender systems and its pathways to modernity. It traces the life-courses of men and women on all the continents, from their birth and childhood to their old age and their funeral. It is aimed at everybody who, even with experience, has kept a beginner's curiosity of the world, to everybody who does not know everything they want to know about it and has the desire to know more.