Bringing together specialists from the fields of international relations, history and politics, this work attempts to answer three main questions regarding the 20th century. It considers what the century's salient characteristics have been, what else is ending as the century ends, and whether Churchill was right in calling it a "disappointing century". As the contributors address these issues, they also discuss whether it has been an American century or a "nuclear" century, and whether it marks the "end of history", the triumph of Western liberalism, or merely the end of the Cold War.

Alex Danchev is Professor of International Relations at Keele University and Visiting Senior Research Fellow in War Studies at King's College, London. Among other works, he is the author of a highly acclaimed biography of Oliver Franks, and co-editor of a series of new international perspectives on the conflicts inthe Falklands, the Gulf and the former Yugoslavia. He is currently working on a biography of Basil Liddell Hart. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1989 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1993. He is also a Fellow of the Tate Gallery in London.