Book excerpt: The still chaotic states of the former Soviet Union, a growing China, and the divergent nations of Eastern Europe are striving to radically transform their economies. In their quest to become more integrated with the global economy, they are making historic changes to move toward market-based, private-enterprise systems. In this book, Barry P. Bosworth and Gur Ofer provide a balanced assessment of the progress of integration among the formerly centrally planned economies. So far, the results of the reform process range from amazing success in China to economic and political disarray in the states of the former Soviet Union. The authors outline the key issues that any successful reform program must address and the sequence in which these reforms should take place. A volume of Brookings' Integrating National Economies Series