The Third Wave makes startling sense of the violent changes now battering our world. Its sweeping synthesis casts fresh light on our new forms of marriage and family, on today's dramatic changes in business and economics. It explains the role of cults, the new definitions of work, play, love, and success. It points toward new forms of twenty-first-century democracy. Sweeping across history and the future, this stunning portrait of a new civilization springing up across the globe was a top bestseller throughout the 1980s. It reveals the hidden connections among today's changes - in business, family life, technology, markets, politics and personal life. The Third Wave led major corporations to refocus their strategies, Japanese leaders to encourage their country's leap beyond industrialism, and Chinese intellectuals to press their campaign for democratic reform.