Community, a subject that lies at the heart of dozens of social initiatives and academic endeavors, has at last been explored in a resource large enough to encompass its variety and complexity. The Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World is the creation of a global team, led by senior academic editor Karen Christensen of Berkshire Publishing Group, of nearly 400 scholars and professionals who developed, in only 18 months, a work of 1.2-million words in four volumes, containing over 500 articles. The encyclopedia captures the fullness of our deep and contradictory responses to community, drawing on the work of historians, sociologists, anthropologists, town planners, and experts from a variety of other disciplines and some twenty countries.