Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer features many great anecdotes, like Derluguian’s discovery that “the headquarters of the Islamic battalion are now located at Rosa Luxemburg Street, 12,” in Grozny. But no one — except grad students — reads a two-decade-old work of historical sociology for the details. What is most impressive and resonant about Derluguian is his methodological approach to the real political, economic, and military complexities and contingencies that “civilizations” are composed of. “Let us be more precise,” he writes,

when trying to identify the historical moments and institutional locations in which human agency might liberate itself from structural constraints to shape the course of history. Evidently, this becomes more likely in moments of historical transition, when structural constraints are overloaded, eroded, battered, and imploding. But it is always a relative situation. Structures rarely fall apart completely, and besides, complete chaos would deny human agency the structural basis for exercising its plans or might undo that agency itself. The two sides of the equation are surely relational. Furthermore, let me add that the impression we gain may depend on our instruments. The greater the magnification, the more important do acts of human will appear.