Highways, Byways, and Road Systems in the Pre-Modern World reveals the significance and interconnectedness of early civilizations’ pathways. This international collection of readings providing a description and comparative analysis of several sophisticated systems of transport and communication across pre-modern cultures. Offers a comparative analysis of several sophisticated systems of overland transport and communication networks across pre-modern cultures Addresses the burgeoning interest in connectivity and globalization in ancient history, archaeology, anthropology, and recent work in network analysis Explores the societal, cultural, and religious implications of various transportation networks around the globe Includes contributions from an international team of scholars with expertise on pre-modern India, China, Japan, the Americas, North Africa, Europe, and the Near East Structured to encourage comparative thinking across case studies

As you read this book, you are taking a stroll down some of the roads and paths the author has taken throughout her life. Experience a world where the photographs tell a story, and the words paint a picture. See the magic, and experience the wonder of a world where love, laughter, pain and joy are combined to create a complete picture. Enjoy all the colors in a rainbow, whether it is spread across the sky, or mirrowed in a teardrop. You will walk in all kinds of weather, but it will be a walk to remember, and one you will want to take again and again.

Hungarian economist Janos Kornai first used the metaphor of a single path to postsocialist transition in his earlier book, The Road to a Free Economy. The new metaphor that frames this collection of eight recent studies reflects a broader perspective and understanding of the complexities of transition: every highway and byway leads eventually to capitalism, Kornai observes, but to what kind, how fast, and at what cost? Who wins and who loses? Kornai draws from his experiences of Hungarian reform as well as from countries of the former Soviet Union to make several major points. The first three studies describe what went wrong in countries that tried to mix elements of planned and market economies. Efforts made by communist countries to introduce market socialism (the "middle road") contained an inherent contradiction between the logic of socialism and the logic of a free enterprise system, and were doomed to failure. In the studies that follow, Kornai analyzes the on-going dilemmas. The transition from communism to free enterprise is filled with daunting hurdles; it requires no less than redefining ownership, changing values concerning the distribution of wealth, transferring the control of political power, creating financial institutions and enforcing financial discipline, and making deep economic sacrifice. Kornai closes with an overall survey of postsocialist transition, describing the stages that countries tend to go through, that will be particularly useful to scholars of comparative economic systems.