Integration is the most significant European historical development in the past fifty years, eclipsing in importance even the collapse of the USSR. This movement toward economic and political union has not only helped revive, transform and rejuvenate a battered civilization; it is opening the way to a promising future. Yet, until now, no satisfactory explanation is to be found in any single book as to why integration is significant, how it originated and has developed, how it has changed and continues to change Europe, and where it is headed. John Gillingham is a professor of history at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. His fields of research include European economic and cultural history as well as the history of international organizations. His book Coal, Steel and the Rebirth of Europe, 1945-1955(Cambridge, 1991) was awarded the prestigious George Lewis Beer Prize by the American Historical Association. In addition to two edited volumes and approximately fifty published articles, Gillingham is the author of Industry and Politics in the Third Reich (Columbia, 1985) and Belgian Business in the Nazi New Order (Ghent, 1977). Gillingham has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and elsewhere.