prewar ally, the Soviet Union, was crumbling and had joined the UN in
condemning Iraq.

Although some commentators may have made the Korean analogy in
1990, detailed information about the Korean War is probably still un-
known to most people. The problem is that the declassification of official
records takes one generation; then another generation of students is nec-
essary before history teachers and textbooks find the proper balance about
what should be known regarding critical events in history.

This book explores both the traditional interpretations of the Korean
War and recent scholarly findings and trends. This research process has
been aided by information from Soviet and Chinese documents that are
now being added to the declassified Western documents about the decade
after World War II. As readers will see, much work on the issues regarding
the origins and conduct of the Korean War still remains; I hope this book
will stimulate the process.

Each chapter in this book contains citations on primary sources and
references relevant to their topics, as well as general materials covering
broad areas of the Korean War period. These materials will be described
in terms of general reference material, official government records, pa-
pers of Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, and a variety
of special reference works.

Although dated, Keith D. McFarland ( 1986) annotated bibliography
on the Korean War remains valuable. For general materials on U.S. history
from 1945 to 1955, Frank Friedel Harvard Guide ( 1974) is valuable but
dated. More recent is Francis Paul Prucha ( 1994) Handbook, a guide to
bibliographies and reference books on American history. Mary Beth Norton's
Guide to Historical Literature, was published for the American
Historical Association in 1995. Because the Korean War took place at a
time when anticommunism became prevalent in the United States, Peter Buckingham's
( 1988) bibliography on that phenomenon in America is
relevant. Warren Kuehl ( 1972) edited an index to doctoral dissertations
on American history that were written at American and Canadian univer-
sities and coedited with Nancy Ferguson ( 1981) a bibliography on the
United States and the United Nations.

Research on diplomatic aspects of the Korean War era must begin with
Richard Burns ( 1983) Guide, a book that the Society for Historians of
American Foreign Relations is expected to update in the near future. The
quarterly issues of Foreign Affairs include source materials and books on
international affairs that update Henry L. Roberts ( 1955, 1964) and Janis A. Kreslins's
' ( 1976) Foreign Affairs Bibliography; volumes 3 to 5 cover 1942
to 1972.

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