<P>Since Malthus, an East--West dichotomy has been used to characterize marriagebehavior in Asia and Europe. Marriages in Asia were said to be early and universal, in Europe lateand non-universal. In Europe, marriages were supposed to be the result of individual choices but, inAsia, decided by families and communities. This book challenges this binary taxonomy of marriagepatterns and family systems. Drawing on richer and more nuanced data, the authors compare theinterpretations based on aggregate demographic patterns with studies of individual actions in localpopulations. Doing so, they are able to analyze simultaneously the influence on marriage decisionsof individual demographic features, socioeconomic status and composition of the household, and localconditions, and the interactions of these variables. They find differences between East and West butalso variation within regions and commonality across regions. The book studies local populations inSweden, Belgium, Italy, Japan, and China. Rather than a simple comparison of aggregate marriagepatterns, it examines marriage outcomes and determinants of local populations in different countriesusing similar data and methods. The authors first present the results of comparative analyses offirst marriage and remarriage and then offer chapters each of which is devoted to the results from aspecific country. <I>Similarity in Difference</I> is the third in a prizewinning serieson the demographic history of Eurasia, following <I>Life under Pressure</I> (2004) and<I>Prudence and Pressure</I> (2009), both published by the MIT Press.</P>