Subject: THE WORLD SYSTEM: FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OR FIVE THOUSAND?
         edited by Andre Gunder Frank and Barry K. Gills
         London and New York: Routledge 1993
         hardcover LSt 40, US$ 65

NOW OUT IN PAPERBACK AT ABOUT US$ 25.
 
Excerpts from the publisher's blurb of orginal hardback edition:
 
"THE WORLD SYSTEM confronts the idea that historic long term
economic inter-connectedness did not begin, as some say, 500
years ago but rather 5,000. The book broadly poses a challenge to
Eurocentric world history and offers a humanocentric alternative
analysis addressed to a wide range of disciplines. The editors
have gathered an impressive array of scholars involved in world
system analysis, and include both statments of and responses to
the various aspects and issues created by these controvesial and
challenging theories of 'one world system.'
 
Chapter title topics include:

interdisciplinary introduction; imperialism in ancient world
systems; civilizations, world economies and oikumenes; capital
accumulation; hegemonic transitions; cycles, crises and hegemonic
shifts 1700 BC to 1700 AD; ancient versus modern world-systems;
discontinuities and persistence; world system versus world-
systems; feudalism, capitalism, socialism. 
 
Contributors are:

Foreword by William H. McNeill

Preface by Andre Gunder Frank and Barry K. Gills

In support of the theory, chapters by:
     A.G. Frank and B.K. Gills [5 chapters individually jointly]
     Kaisa Ekholm and Jonathan Friedman
     David Wilkinson

Critical of the theory, chapters by
     Samir Amin
     Immanuel Wallerstein

In part supporting, in part critical, chapter by
     Janet Abu Lughod

Rejoinder and Conclusions by A. G. Frank and B.K. Gills