Abstract
As Book Review Editor for Economic Development Quarterly (EDQ) I am sent a large number of scholarly books from publishers in the hope that I will find them of sufficient potential interest to readers of the journal that I will commission a review. These books are diverse in the topics that they cover. For example, recent topics that have been covered by reviewed books include labor shortages, knowledge commercialization, universities as economic drivers, suburban poverty, and economic forecasting. While diverse in their topics all of these books are fairly traditional in their approach to the topic in question—every book comprising a number of logically organized chapters, each covering a different subtopic spread across several hundred pages of text that is supported, where appropriate, with tables, graphs, and maps. So it was with great interest when Clusters and Your Economy: An Illustrated Introduction by Joseph Cortright, Lotte Langkilde, Mike Russel, Adrian Wallace, and Bill Mudron appeared in my mailbox. Here was a publication that dealt with a mainstream topic—industrial clusters—that I knew would be of great interest to readers of EDQ, but whose presentation—comic-book style—was quite different and very nontraditional.
As I thought about how to present this to readers of the journal, it occurred to me that its nontraditional style warranted not one but two reviews—one by an expert in industrial clusters and one by a nonexpert whose research interests lie elsewhere. With this in mind, I contacted Edward Feser, professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Illinois Urban-Champaign and David “Jim” Nemeth, professor of geography and planning at the University of Toledo. Ed is an expert in local and regional economic development who has published extensively on industrial clusters. In sharp contrast, Jim is a cultural geographer whose work spans a broad range of fascinating topics, including alternative tourism, gypsy culture, and the cultural geography of Korea’s Cheju Island. The result is two quite different but equally well-crafted, insightful, and thought-provoking reviews. I hope that you enjoy them.