Am Soc (2010) 41:375–381 381 Sixteen years later, I’m still alive and kicking—if only in a struggle to stay afloat in those still-murky waters. Or maybe I’m still perched precariously on that half- built bridge. In the end, the problem is not that the bridge is incomplete, or that the waters are murky: most of us, most of the time, labor on one half-built bridge or another, or struggle to find our way in murky waters. The problem is that it’s a whole lot lonelier and more confusing being there without having Chuck on the opposite bank, a powerful beacon of hope and encouragement, always ready to throw a line or lend a hand. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. References Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso. Gorski, P. S. (2003). The disciplinary revolution: Calvinism and the rise of the state in early modern Europe. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. McAdam, D. (2008). Chuck Tilly, conversationalist extraordinaire. Sociologie et Sociétés, 41(2), 15–19, pre-publication pdf at: http://essays.ssrc.org/tilly/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/homage-mcadam.pdf. Meyer, J. W. (1987). The world polity and the authority of the nation-state. In G. M. Thomas, J. W. Meyer, & F. O. Ramirez (Eds.), Institutional structure: Constituting state, society, and the individual. Newbury Park: Sage. Tilly, C. (1975). Reflections on the history of European state-making. In C. Tilly (Ed.), The formation of national states in western Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tilly, C. (1991). Ethnic conflict in the Soviet Union. Theory and Society, 20, 569–580. Tilly, C. (1994). A bridge halfway: responding to Brubaker. Contention: Debates in Society, Culture, and Science, 4, 15–19. Tilly, C. (1996). The state of nationalism. Critical Review, 10, 299–306. Tilly, C. (1998). Durable inequality. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tilly, C. (2002). Stories, identities, and political change. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Zelizer, V. (2008). Chuck Tilly and Mozart. The Social Science Research Council, Contention, Change, and Explanation: A Conference in Honor of Charles Tilly. http://www.ssrc.org/hirschman/content/ 2008/texts/Zelizer.pdf.