The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History, by Douglass C. North and Robert Paul Thomas, The Modern World-System by Immanuel Wallerstein, Contrasting Communities: English Villagers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, by Margaret SpuffordThe Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History, by Douglass C. North and Robert Paul Thomas. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1973. 171 pp. The Modern World-System by Immanuel Wallerstein. Academic Press, New York, 1974. 410 pp. Contrasting Communities: English Villagers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, by Margaret Spufford. Cambridge University Press, 1974. 374 pp.