在这部关于经济史和社会理论的经典著作中，卡尔·波兰尼分析了工业革命的大转型带来的经济和社会的巨大变化。他的分析不仅阐述了自我调适的自由市场的缺陷，而且阐述了资本主义市场带来的可怕的社会后果。新的序言和导言揭示了在全球化和自由贸易时代波兰尼的精辟分析所具有的新的价值。
当第二次世界大战接近尾声的时候，两本关于政治经济学的著作出版了。一本是哈耶克的《通向奴役之路》，它成为20世纪最后四分之一世纪里的自由市场革命的推动性力量。另一本是卡尔·波兰尼的《大转型》，它值得人们好好阅读，它是这个世纪最重要、最具创造性的著作，就扩展和加深对市场社会的批评而言，这个时代没有其他书比《大转型》做得更多了。

"Hornborg argues that we are caught in a collective illusion about the nature of modern technology that prevents us from imagining solutions to our economic and environmental crises other than technocratic fixes. He demonstrates how the power of the machine generates increasingly asymmetrical exchanges and distribution of resources and risks between distant populations and ecosystems, and thus an increasingly polarized world order. The author challenges us to reconceptualize the machine--industrial technomass"--as a species of power and a problem of culture. He shows how economic anthropology has the tools to deconstruct the concepts of production, money capital, and market exchange, and to analyze capital accumulation as a problem at the very interface of the natural and social sciences. His analysis provides an alternative understanding of economic growth and technological development. Hornborg's work is essential for researchers in anthropology, human ecology, economics, political economy, world-systems theory, environmental justice, and science and technology studies.