As employed here, impact assessment is defined as "the systematic assessment of the potential or actual effects of a public intervention on the economic, social, and environmental `pillars' of sustainable development." Impact assessment is being adopted as a tool of policy making in a growing number of developed and developing counties. In the first half of this volume, the editors (both of the Impact Assessment Research Centre, Institute for Development Policy and Management, U. of Manchester, UK) present nine papers that explore concepts and methods for impact assessment of sustainable development and specifically address such topics as evaluation of capacity building in regional network governance, lessons learned in considering environmental aspects in integrated impact assessment, the relative utility of computable general equilibrium models for sustainability impact assessment, and the selection of suitable tools for sustainability impact assessment. The volume also offers six case studies of European practice and experience. Annotation ⓒ2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)