In 1985, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Great Lakes Commission conceived and produced a statistical compendium of the Great Lakes region entitled "The Great Lakes Economy: A Resource and Industry Profile of the Great Lakes States". The present document represents a culmination of several years' research which updates and eclipses its predecessor in several important ways. The volume provides analysts of the region the opportunity to interpret the facts surrounding the region's endowments, performance, and changes. In doing so, several authors have chosen to look beyond the states themselves to the closely-linked Canadian portion of the Great Lakes region. Resource and industry trends and performance are still addressed in full but the linkages among the region's resources, people, and industries are also brought to the fore.

The Great Lakes are the largest collection of fresh surface water on earth, and more than 40 million Americans and Canadians live in their basin. Will we divert water from the Great Lakes, causing them to end up like Central Asia's Aral Sea, which has lost 90 percent of its surface area and 75 percent of its volume since 1960? Or will we come to see that unregulated water withdrawals are ultimately catastrophic? Peter Annin writes a fast-paced account of the people and stories behind these upcoming battles. Destined to be the definitive story for the general public as well as policymakers, The Great Lakes Water Wars is a balanced, comprehensive look behind the scenes at the conflicts and compromises that are the past-and future-of this unique resource.

This book examines the international factors such as enforced democracy and globalization that have affected the Great Lakes region of Africa. The horrendous consequences in terms of violence and human suffering of the events in this area have been exhibited in the media, however news coverage after 1994 was at times unreliable. This book takes a look at life since then, adopting an independent, and on occasion controversial perspective.