Although economic, cultural and demographic changes are part and parcel of the modern world, changes in a number of areas have accelerated in the last quarter-century - a period sometimes spoken of as the global information society, a world of 'liquid modernity' - or of fully-fledged global neoliberalism associated with deregulation, flexible accumulation and financialisation. This book gives a compelling perspective on the contemporary, 'overheated' world, presenting ethnographic material from many countries and weaving the local and particular together with large-scale global acceleration. This book was first published as a special issue of History and Anthropology.