Obviously, Europe's transition from agriculture to commerce to post-industrial economies ran roughly parallel with its application of advances in science and new technologies. Which of these advances had the most impact? What new technologies will take Europe beyond post-industrialism? This collection of essays tracks the trajectories of sciences that moved economies and societies from the rural to the urban and thence to the global includes such topics as urban architecture and culture, transportation from the personal to the collective and back to the personal, navigation of the seas and the heavens, communication, the ever-present specters of war, energy, domestic and workplace technology, and the rising appreciation of a global experience of advances and improvements. This is a positive assessment of what we have done so far, and also a warning that some advancement, particularly in the case of war, is not an improvement. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)