This comparison of the relationship between organized fem-inism and partisan politics in Canada and the United Statesaddresses two questions. First, Young asks how much orga-nized feminism has influenced partisan and electoral politicsin each country. Second, she asks how political parties in eachcountry have responded to organized feminism. She answersthese questions by examining the relationship between eachcountry's largest feminist organization and its party systemand by showing how each relationship changed between 1970and 1997. The result is an important and readable book thatdemonstrates the value of feminist political science as anapproach, especially in comparative politics. The book ishead and shoulders above many other texts about feministpolitical activism, mainly because of Young's ability to bridgebetween feminist ideas about politics and the comparativepolitics literature about political opportunities.

This new book by one of the most distinguished seniorcontributors to scholarship on the international politicaleconomy (IPE) of money is a fascinating and ambitious effortto remap our understandings of the geography of money.Cohen argues convincingly that the prevailing mental mapbased on one nation/one money is outmoded. Monies areprimarily differentiated today not by territory but by theirfunction in a hierarchical pyramid-like arrangement; the fewcurrencies at the top are used widely internationally, whereasthose at the bottom have been displaced even within theirhome borders and may now serve only trivial administrativefunctions. The great number of theoretical and empiricalinsights into an important process of global restructuring, andthe engaging and straightforward style, should make thisbook of interest well beyond those who specialize in thesometimes dauntingly technical literature on global moneyand finance.

Literary forms of inquiry into politics range far beyond thejournal article and the scholarly monograph. MyronAronoff's monograph serves us well by respecting the novelof international intrigue as an insightful form for analyzingthe politics of diplomacy, bureaucracy, covert action, andinternational regimes. Aronoff targets the latter-day dean ofspy novelists, David Cornwell, who writes under the name ofJohn le Carre´.

Studies of the relationship between the distribution ofpower and prospects for conflict or cooperation have adistinguished history in the field of international politics.Several competing theories have been offered to explainvariation in foreign policy behavior as a function of powerdistributions. Moreover, a wealth of empirical evidencesuggests the crucial role that power plays in internationalbargaining. The Origins of Major War is a deeply penetrat-ing, extraordinarily wide-ranging, and judicious treatmentof the onset of major conflict, and it offers an explanationand some evidence for the relationship between powerdifferentials and major power conflict. Copeland providesa dynamic theory of major power war, building uponclassic realism. In my view, his diagnosis and combinationof prescription are substantially correct.

In two provocative new books, Elizabeth DeSombre andMatthew Paterson attack two issues that call into questioncommon assumptions about international environmental pol-itics (IEP). Paterson asks: Does our global environmentalpredicament reflect unfortunate, but essentially unrelated,secular trends or the influence of deeper, structural forces?DeSombre asks: Does resolution of environmental problems,whatever their sources, require broad support among manycountries, or can solutions arise from unilateral action by asingle powerful state? Paterson's answer involves a refreshingcritique of the IEP literature that shows how traditionalrealist and liberal approaches systematically ignore the un-derlying causes of global environmental change. DeSombreprovides a trenchant analysis of when, how, and why acountry will attempt, and succeed at, internalization of itsown domestic environmental regulations. Both books makesignificant contributions to the growing IEP literature, ex-tending it to important new areas of research.

For three decades political scientists have attempted to showthat markets reflect the political institutions and politicswithin which they function. Also, many scholars have tracedstates' foreign economic policies to their domestic politics.Open-Economy Politics pushes both these projects forwardwith an extended case study of the world coffee market.Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Robert Bates takesus chronologically through key shifts in policies of the chiefcoffee trading countries-Brazil, Colombia, and the UnitedStates-especially the formation, operation, and collapse ofthe International Coffee Organization from 1962 through1982.

In introductory international relations courses, we were onceaccustomed to contrast three alternative approaches: realism,liberalism, and Marxism. The collapse of the Soviet Unionand the proclaimed triumph of liberal politicoeconomic ideashas led to a deemphasis on the third paradigm or, in somecases, its substitution by constructivism. But, contrary toFukuyama, history has not quite ended. Neo-Marxist inter-pretations of international relations persist, and new andinteresting ones continue to emerge. The latest entry,Boswell and Chase-Dunn's new book, is a case in point. Aslong-time and leading contributors to world systems theory,they employ their theoretical interpretation of modern his-tory (the last 500 years) to explain what went wrong withsocialism and how the socialist strategy might still be salvagedin a future world-system (with a hyphen).

When the intellectual history of international relations in-quiry is written for our time, War and Peace in InternationalRivalry may very well be seen as a seminal book. Along withFrank Wayman, Diehl and Goertz have been at the forefrontof a major conceptual breakthrough in the way peace and warare studied. This book is their major statement of the subjectand presents their most important findings.

When I was an undergraduate in the 1960s, as the Vietnamconflict was escalating, I took Stanley Hoffmann's mesmeriz-ing course, "Causes of War." I thought back to this class as Iread Cynthia Enloe's book, which deserves all the superla-tives it has accrued. The experience of reading now andremembering back left me wondering: Without Enloe toconsult (her first book on militarism and gender came out inthe early 1980s), what were we missing in Hoffmann's class?The answer, I think, is this: We could understand well enoughthe contending theories about why nations go to war; but inthe absence of Enloe, we were less able to ask how militariescould manage such massive mobilizations that required theoften calamitous sacrifice of precious lives even for warswhose purposes seemed remote or unconvincing.

As toxic pollutants and hazardous production emerged acrossthe twentieth century, first-world states came to play aguardian role, imposing constraints on capital to safeguardtheir workers, communities, and environments. As we enterthe new century, vigorous protest and debate over thecharacter and conditions of neoliberal globalization center onwhether or how to reaffirm or extend such protections in anera of free trade, capital mobility, privatization, and deregu-lation. From Rio to Seattle, Kyoto to Prague, controversyarises over where the locus of authority for codes of corpo-rate conduct might rest. Can states be redeemed as guardiansand still avert a destructive "race to the bottom"? Canexisting supranational bodies or regimes be charged withdesign and enforcement of global standards, or are newinternational institutions imperative? Dare we trust multina-tional corporations (MNCs) to police themselves? What isthe proper role of advocacy networks and civic organiza-tions?