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The Ancient Greeks imagined it to be the abode of the gods; scholars of the Middle Ages called it the land of Prester John; the prophent Mohammed urged the faithful to seek refuge from religious persecution among the hospitible people of Abyssinia. One of the oldest independent nations-states in the word, Ethiopia is little known or understood by the outside world even today. In this book, a native scholar and educator examines one area of Ethiopian history—educational change. Working from first-hand sources, personal experiences, and archival documents, Professor Wagaw analyzes the development of education in Ethiopia from an ancient, rigid, church-controlled system to the modern public school system, a product of changing times and public demand. This is an invaluable source for those interested in Ethiopian culture and education, those engaged in research in comparative education, and those interested in the process of African and Third World modernization.

A major figure offers a sweeping evaluation of the place of the city in the global future. In essays as engaging as they are informative, a leading figure in urban planning and geography broadly surveys the complex terrain of global urbanization. Unique in its scope and its prospective view of city-regions as substantially autonomous "quasi city-states," this book offers an unprecedented look at the global urban future, focusing on models of development, transnational migration, citizenship, representation, and the good city as a utopian construct. Beginning with an overview of global urbanization patterns-particularly the entropic forces that exacerbate poverty, increase violence, and discourage democratic life in peripheral areas-The Prospect of Cities goes on to address specific contemporary issues. These range in subject and scale from the impact of transnational migration on global cities whose populations are at least 30 percent of foreign origin to the critical importance of everyday life, as it is experienced on the streets and in neighborhoods, for a full understanding of urban planning. The final chapter traces the author's evolution as one of the world's foremost theorists of city-regional development and planning, deepening the perspective mapped out over the course of the volume and providing new insight into the study of the urban landscape in a global environment. Whether arguing for a new approach to sustainable development, finding the moral focus of nonterritorial citizenship, or mounting a spirited, pragmatic defense of utopian thinking in urban planning, John Friedmann offers an informed, workable, and hopeful prospect for the cities of our time and of the future. John Friedmann is professor emeritus of the University of California at Los Angeles, where he was the founding chair of the Department of Urban Planning. He is also an honorary professor at the University of British Columbia. His recent books include Empowerment: The Politics of Alternative Development (1992) and, as coeditor, Cities for Citizens: Planning and the Rise of Civil Society in a Global Age (1998).

This book fills the crucial need for a single volume that gives broad coverage and synthesizes findings for both the general reader and the specialist. This collection of twenty-two essays from fifteen well-known scholars presents linguistic research on the indigenous languages of South America, surveying past research, providing data and analysis gathered from past and current research, and suggesting prospects for future investigation.

Of interest not only to linguists but also to anthropologists, historians, and geographers, South American Indian Languages offers a wide perspective, both temporal and regional, on an area noted for its enormous linguistic diversity and for the lack of knowledge of its indigenous languages. An invaluable source book and reference tool, its appearance is especially timely when exploitation of the rich natural resources in a number of areas in South America must surely result in the demise and/or acculturation of some indigenous groups.

This monumental study is an account of the world economy from the eighteenth century to the twentieth, an analysis and prescription for the future, and a challenge to the neo-Keynesian theories of income determination and growth. It is based on some forty years of research and teaching.

Originally published in 1978, the volume looks back over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It includes an analysis of how the world's population expanded from about 1 billion in 1800 to 4 billion in 1976, with some 6.5 billion in sight for the year 2000; an account of the expansion and distribution of industrial production and trade during this period; and an analysis of price and relative price movements since the eighteenth century. Rostow gives a detailed description of the Kondratieff long cycles in the relative scarcity and abundance of food and raw materials and reasons that the world economy entered the fifth Kondratieff upswing at the close of 1972. He also examines the changing pattern of business cycles over the whole sweep of modern economic growth and the failure of the post-1945 world economy to control inflation. The volume also includes short economic histories of twenty national economies responsible for 80 percent of the world's production, based on a collection of computerized aggregate and sectoral data.

Each historical section leads naturally into one or more of the major problems dealt with in the final portion of the book, which looks to the future of the world economy: food, population, energy, raw materials, the environment, and the tasks of national and international policy. Rostow argued, counter to the Limits to Growth doctrine, that the critical period for industrial civilization lay in the last twenty-five years of the twentieth century, rather than in the twenty-first century, and that what we did or failed to do in that generation would determine the shape of the longer future.

No other economic history of this depth and breadth exists. It is a reference for economists, economic historians, and other social scientists as well as the informed lay reader.