Skocpol's book, according to Pfaff, is a clearly identifiable as a product of the politics of the 1970s. She “helped launch a new generation of comparative research on the largest and most consequential of historical questions.” Pfaff goes on to say, even if Skocpol didn't explain the causes that might have triggered state crisis and the mobilization of the people, “and if, in its enthusiasm for revolution, it overestimated the gains of revolutionary transformation, the book nevertheless deserves its place among the canonical works of comparative and historical research.”