The focus of Fernand Braudel's great work is the Mediterranean world in the second half of the sixteenth century, but Braudel ranges back in history to the world of Odysseus and forward to our time, moving out from the Mediterranean area to the New World and other destinations of Mediterranean traders. Braudel's scope embraces the natural world and material life, economics, demography, politics, and diplomacy.

Fernand Braudel (1902-1985) was a member of the editorial board of Annales and of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, and chief adminsitrator of the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme. His three-volume work, Civilization and Capitalism, is available from California.

"Braudel ranges with ease over the centuries, displaying an extraordinary erudition of all periods in all of Western Europe's major languages."—J. H. Plumb, New York Times Book Review

"A brilliant translation. . . . Braudel's metahistorical classic [is] one of the few great histories of recent times."—The Economist

"Because Braudel's Mediterranean can be read on several levels simultaneously, it has an importance and a range that extend far beyond any one historical category."—J. H. Elliott, New York Review of Books

"Braudel's Mediterranean is a tour de force, one of the classics of this century's historical writing."—Charles Tilly, author of As Sociology Meets History