Book excerpt: The most pressing problem for most developing countries is how to reverse the adverse trends of the 1980s and create the conditions for sustainable development. The contributors to this volume bring a great variety of experience, background and interest to bear on this issue. Considerable attention is given to the design of appropriate structural adjustment programmes and the role of debt reduction, food aid and the European Community in this context. The need for an adaptive evolutionary approach to problems of development is, perhaps, the central theme to the volume.