The linkage between nationalism, or to be more precise ethnonationalism, and international relations is now at the center of world politics. Following years in which this dimension has been neglected in our literature, the discipline has finally caught up with the reality that most of the conflicts taking place around the world are related to the politics of national or ethnic identity. To be sure, political science responded earlier to the call of Walker Connor (“Nation Building or Nation Destroying,” World Politics 24 [April 1972]: 319–55) and Anthony Smith (The Ethnic Revival 1981) to supplant the notion of the integrated modern state with a more pluralistic approach. Following the end of the Cold War, international relations as a discipline had no choice but to pay attention to ethnicity. As expected, once the phenomenon was recognized, the literature grew extensively in both the theoretical and empirical areas. In recent years, even Michael Brecher's and Jonathan Wilkenfeld's prestigious International Crisis Behavior (ICB) worldwide data set had to turn around and adopt an ethnic variable. Patrick James and David Carment, using the ICB empirical stockpile, dedicated a large portion of their work to the ethnic dimension of international crises. Similarly, T. R. Gurr, also a former president of the International Studies Association (like Brecher), made an about-turn and focused his work on conflict through his Minorities At Risk (MAR) database on ethnicity. Kristen Williams's book is thus another attempt to integrate international relations theory and ethnic politics literature while basing it on empirical research. Despite some flaws, this book should be welcomed into the growing literature on nationalism and international conflict. It has two theoretical and four empirical chapters, each covering a different case, starting with Bismarck and German unification and proceeding to Bosnia, Kosovo, and Kashmir.

This book left me a bit frustrated. It was as if I had gone to a nice restaurant, reviewed an extensive menu that left my mouth watering, but only got to taste a couple of items. As its title declares, this is a book about the different meanings the words “war” and “peace” can have. We take for granted that the meanings are important for those of us studying international politics. It is also self-evident that words have various connotations and meanings. This was always true for the term “terrorist” for example—one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. Since September 11, many of us have been asking questions about the meaning of various terms and concepts, such as a “war on terrorism.”

The Cold War and the Color Line is a fairminded account of the interaction between Cold War foreign policy and race relations in the United States. Thomas Borstelmann's narrative follows the parallel struggles for civil rights within the United States and against colonialism and white supremacist regimes abroad. The central thesis of the book is that these processes influenced each other. Changing American race relations affected the way the United States fought the Cold War and responded to the end of European colonial rule, while the Cold War influenced the domestic civil rights movement in various ways.

Since the Cold War's end, the United Nations Security Council has become a more active and controversial player in international politics. Its perceived mandate in peace and security affairs had expanded considerably since the UN's creation in 1945. As its operational scope grows, so too has its detractors, who note its failures in the early 1990s, especially in Somalia and Bosnia. Jane Boulden's book comes at an important time in world politics as the United Nations begins the process of addressing Afghanistan's evolution toward democracy and stability, and as major operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, the Middle East and elsewhere persist.

Despite optimistic expectations to the contrary, the post–Cold War era has generated a considerable degree of violent conflict. These conflicts have caused substantial human suffering and destabilization for the inhabitants of affected regions. The continent of Africa has been especially prone to political strife. Selected countries in other areas of the world, such as Afghanistan, Colombia, and the former Yugoslavia, have also been affected. And even relatively prosperous countries, such as the United States are not insulated from the effects of Third World instability—as the events of September 11 have dramatically demonstrated. Naturally enough, the world community has sought ways to settle these conflicts through negotiated settlements, often supervised by “impartial” external authorities like the United Nations. And there has been a growing interest among academics in these efforts at external third-party mediation.

Michael Glennon's recent work is the best book written on international law and the use of force in the past 40 years. While this may seem to be a bold statement, I make it for three reasons. First, Glennon's conception of international law that forms the basis of his analysis reflects an accurate understanding of the nature of the international system and the realities of international relations. Second, his analytical method reveals the dynamics of how states constitute rules of international law. Third, he offers a realistic conclusion about the current, woeful status of the law, but provides hope for future improvements. Let me say a word about each of these points.

Joshua Goldstein has authored an exhaustive and insightful book on the major ways in which gender and war influence each other. This lengthy, thoroughly researched, and clearly argued work should have broad appeal for scholars of war and international relations, as well as of gender, across several disciplines and theoretical predilections. Why is it, the book asks, that although manifestations of both war and gender show great diversity, there is one constant: Gender roles in the context of war vary almost not at all across cultures and across time. Fighters are almost exclusively men, with the “near-total exclusion” of women from combat.

In this volume, several prominent international relations and international law (IL) scholars propose a framework through which to examine the proliferation of international legal institutions. They hope to chart common conceptual ground for IL and IR scholarship in order to examine the role of international law in international affairs.