<DIV><P>Recent data show wide disparity between Japan and the United States in the effectiveness of their health care systems. Japan spends close to the lowest percentage of its gross domestic product on health care among OECD countries, the United States spends the highest, yet life expectancies in...</p></div>

"The circulation of medicine and medical knowledge in Britain was long entangled not simply with the mechanisms of commerce but with those of empire. The same networks that enabled the articulation and defense of imperial priorities also transmitted knowledge and value in ways that ultimately...

"In From Old Regime to Industrial State, Richard H. Tilly and Michael Kopsidis question established thinking about Germany's industrialization. They begin their assessment earlier than previous studies have, reaching back to the 18th century to explore the circumstances that ultimately allowed...

We love the local. From the cherries we buy, to the grocer who sells them, to the school where our child unpacks them for lunch, we express resurging faith in decentralizing the institutions and businesses that arrange our daily lives. But the fact is that huge, bureaucratic organizations often...

<DIV>Mintz and Schwartz offer a fascinating tour of the corporate world. Through an intensive study of interlocking corporate directorates, they show that for the first time in American history the loan making and stock purchasing and selling powers are concentrated in the same hands: the leadership...</div>

From New York to Singapore, from Chicago to London, the trading floors of the world’s financial markets are icons of global capitalism. Images of them are used on the news all the time—traders burying their heads in their hands when the market is down, their arms flailing in a frenzy when...

<DIV>What can body measurements tell us about living standards in the past? In this collection of essays studying height and weight data from eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe, North America, and Asia, fourteen distinguished scholars explore the relation between physical size, economic...</div>

An in-depth exploration of digital culture and its dissemination, <I>Sharing</I> offers a counterpoint to the dominant view that file sharing is piracy. Instead, Philippe Aigrain looks at the benefits of file sharing, which allows unknown writers and artists to be appreciated more easily. Concentrating...</i>