For the young such words do not resonate in the way that they did in the past. To those who lived through much, if not all, of the Cold War, it is something of a shock to encounter students who have no direct recollection of it and it is difficult to advise them on how to negotiate a way through the vast array of often contentious Cold War literature. It is now nearly ten years since the Cold War ended, but debate goes on about its origins, character, the impact it had

on the international system, its place in world history, and the nature and causes of its demise. The scholarly positions adopted, be they orthodox or revisionist, realist or idealist, neo-realist or neo-liberal, are often so polarised that it sometimes appears more important to score points than explain events. As approaches and theories have proliferated and complicated the scholarly terrain, they have also each tended to oversimplify in order to structure a vast array of historical evidence, or to retain consistency within particular assumptions, or to limit the number of variables for the sake of producing parsimonious theories to explain, predict and help policy-makers control the international environment. In this book Murray and Reynolds specifically address these issues; Dobson, Marsh, Malik, Evans and Dix celebrate an eclecticism that, at the very least, stretches out conventional wisdoms and paradigms; Ryall, Rogers and Bideleux go beyond the paradigms; and in the conclusion Ponting addresses the wider context.