Author Description

Since 1945 the world has undergone vast and fundamental change. The collapse of colonial empires and the tensions of the Cold War produced great political turbulence in many areas and integrative movements in others. The end of the Cold War has triggered the breakdown of one of the superpowers and much turmoil elsewhere. To chart a way through these dramatic developments, leading scholars from Britain, Canada, the United States, and Australia present up-to-date surveys of the experience of the world's eleven geopolitical regions. They also consider the contemporary character of sovereign statehood, looking at both its enduring geographical and psychological bases and also at how it has been affected by economic interdependence and ethnicity. The result is an authoritative survey of the international scene during the second half of the twentieth century.