Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. A former senior staff member of the RAND Corporation, he has served as deputy director in the State Department’s policy planning staff, and captured international attention with his bestselling book The End of History and the Last Man. The first in a two-volume work, his new book tracks the evolution of modern political institutions, from the growth of politics among our primate ancestors through the beginning of the French Revolution.

Interviewed by Carlin Romano, critic-at-large of The Chronicle of Higher Education