Europe lives in age of regionalism and regional identities which offer an alternative to the rigidities of organization by nation-state. Historically, such regions have been defined--if defined at all--in cultural, linguistic, ethnic, or political terms, with little emphasis on the economic factors of the period before industrialization. Tom Scott's intensive study of one region--the Upper Rhine between 1450 and 1600--redresses this imbalance. In this locality, divided between three countries and historically marginalized, Scott reveals the existence of a modern sense of regional identity...

No detailed comparison of the city-state in medieval Europe has been undertaken over the last century. Research has concentrated on the role of city-states and their republican polities as harbingers of the modern state, or else on their artistic and cultural achievements, above all in Italy. Much less attention has been devoted to the cities' territorial expansion: why, how, and with what consequences cities in the urban belt, stretching from central and northern Italy over the Alps to Switzerland, Germany, and the Low Countries, succeeded (or failed) in constructing sovereign polities, with...

By the year 2000, the most critical world problem--as things stand now--will be sustaining the human race. The quality and the availability of food will continue to be central to this issue. However, since the beginning of the final quarter of the twentieth century, few attempts have been made to organize and integrate information applying our knowledge of the regulation of plant growth to the enhancement of the world's yield of food, forage, fiber, and other useful plants. It is appropriate, therefore, to approach a solution to future human needs by combining an area of basic science with a...