“What Is an Event? is a sustained meditation about what Wagner-Pacifici has called the ‘restlessness’ of events. She develops a ‘political semiotics’ of the event, elaborating and classifying the speech acts and other symbolic performances that attempt to comprehend, represent, steer, deflect, or bring to an end events—but that often have the effect of pushing them unpredictably forward. Anyone interested in the dynamics of history will have much to learn from this remarkable book.”

William H. Sewell, Jr., University of Chicago

“What Is an Event? is an attempt by one of contemporary sociology’s most brilliant practitioners to theorize the process by which we come to perceive and narrate particular stretches of history as ‘events.’ Drawing on official documents, novels, paintings, and personal narratives, Wagner-Pacifici examines the way we conceptualize beginnings, pauses, turning points, trajectories, as well as the historical background from which events such as shootings, stock market crashes, and revolutions ‘emerge’ or ‘erupt.’ The result is a remarkably ambitious sociological theory of the ‘shape’ of the past.”

Eviatar Zerubavel, Rutgers University

“What Is An Event? is an intellectual treat. Charting how and why events matter, it animates a wide range of cultural texts—from seventeenth century paintings to twenty-first century violence, from political revolutions to financial crises—and demonstrates how they transform across time and space en route to taking their place at the forefront of historical and social thought. Eloquently phrased and elegantly formulated, the book showcases Wagner-Pacifici’s theoretical sophistication, singular analytical acumen, and splendid prose. This is Wagner-Pacifici at her finest.”

Barbie Zelizer, Raymond Williams Professor of Communication, University of Pennsylvania

“Once again, Wagner-Pacifici brings together art, philosophy, and sociology in probing, sophisticated, and deeply illuminating sophisticated ways. Her new social theory sheds new light on empirical events that have remained mysterious even as they continue to transform our social world in fateful ways.”

Jeffrey C. Alexander, Yale University

"Robin Wagner-Pacifici’s What Is an Event? is a powerful and beautifully crafted attempt to lay the groundwork for both a definition of an 'event' as well as a methodological approach for studying events as social researchers. Perhaps most audaciously, it intimately ties ontology and methodology...the book’s generative strength is in the kind of theoretical and empirical work it potentially opens up."

Iddo Tavory | American Journal of Sociology