NORBERT ELIAS (1897-1990) was one of the greatest sociologists of the twentieth century. He studied in Breslau and Heidelberg and served as Karl Mannheim's assistant in Frankfurt. In exile after 1933, first in France and then in Britain, he wrote his magnum opus On the Process of Civilisation. His whole oeuvre is now appearing in new scholarly editions in the Collected Works in English. Stephen Mennell is Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University College Dublin, a member of the Board of the Norbert Elias Foundation, Amsterdam, and General Editor of the Collected Works; Eric Dunning is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Leicester.

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• Norbert Elias, 1897-1990; Note on the text; Introduction; Civilisation and informalisation: changes in European standards of behaviour in the twentieth century; Honour, duelling and membership of the imperial ruling class: being judged worthy to give satisfaction; A digression on nationalism; Civilisation and violence: on the state's monopoly of physical force and its breaking; The breakdown of civilisation; Terrorism in the Federal Republic of Germany: expression of a conflict between generations; Thoughts on the Federal Republic; APPENDICES: I The German aristocratic code and 'proof by ancestry'; II On the interpretation of Mozart's scatological remarks; III Why I began to study the problem of 'civilisation'; IV On the relative independence of the high nobility from the imperial court; V Sieyes, the Third Estate, and changing feelings of identity; VI Machiavelli's policy prescriptions; VII Nationalism and middle-class morality in Victorian Britain; VIII Conflicts trigger aggression; IX On the ethos of the Wilhelmine bourgeoisie; X Pro-war literature during the Weimar Republic (Ernst Junger); XI On the character of conflicts in the early Weimar Republic; XII Conditions for the attainment of the domestic and foreign goals of the old elite; XIII The decay of the state monopoly of force in the Weimar Republic; XIV The stab in the back; XV Lucifer upon the ruins of the world; XVI The meaning of the word Reich - excerpt from the Fischerlexikon; XVII An empire dies; XVIII The awareness of powerlessness - note added in 1984; XIX Marxism and terrorism: a terrorist's explanation; XX George Orwell, 'England Your England'; Textual variants; Bibliography; Index.