Evolution: Trajectories of Social Evolution Volgograd: ‘Uchitel’ Publishing House, 2022. – 360 pp. Ed. by L. E. Grinin and A. V. Korotayev. ISBN 978-5-7057-6147-0 Editorial Council: H. Barry III (USA), Yu. Е. Berezkin (Russia), M. L. Butovskaya (Russia), Ch. Chase-Dunn (USA), V. V. Chernykh (Russia), H. J. M. Claessen (Netherlands), D. Christian (Australia), S. Gavrilets (USA), А. V. Dybo (Russia), K. Yu. Es'kov (Russia), I. V. Ilyin (Russia), P. Herrmann (Ireland), A. A. Kazankov (Russia), G. G. Malinetsky (Russia), A. V. Markov (Russia), A. Yu. Militarev (Russia), M. V. Mina (Russia), V. de Munck (USA), E. B. Naymark (Russia), A. D. Panov (Russia), Zh. I. Reznikova (Russia), B. H. Rodrigue (USA), P. Skalník (Czech Republic), F. Spier (Netherlands).

The present volume is the eighth issue of the ‘Evolution’ Yearbook series. Our Yearbooks are designed to present to its readers the widest possible spectrum of subjects and issues: from universal evolutionism to the analysis of particular evolutionary regularities in the development of bio-logical, abiotic, and social systems, culture, cognition, language, etc. The main objective of our Yearbook is the creation of a unified interdisciplinary field of research, within which scientists specializing in different disciplines could work within the framework of unified or similar paradigms, using common terminology and searching for common rules, tendencies and regularities. Global evolution (in connection with the Big History) becomes the main subject of our Yearbook. We strive to arrange each issue in such a way that the line from cosmic evolution to the human future is evident. However, in this case we focus only on the social branch of evolution.

The title of this issue is Trajectories of Social Evolution. Therefore, we explore a very interesting and somewhat even mysterious phenomenon – Singularity, i.e. in other words, a certain point of time at which many processes sharply change their directions and characteristics.

The volume consists of three sections: ‘Political Aspects of Social Evolution’; ‘Contemporary Level of Evolution and Its Future Projections’; and ‘Singularity as Trend and the Future’.

This Yearbook will be useful both for those who study interdisciplinary macroproblems and for specialists working in focused directions, as well as for those who are interested in evolutionary issues of Cosmology, Biology, History, Anthropology, Economics and other areas of study. More than that, this edition will challenge and excite your vision of your own life and the new discoveries going on around us.

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