movements were at once social and political events in cause and conse-
quence. Likewise, the Cold War created the geopolitical framework for deal-
ing with competing ideologies and nations abroad and served as the
touchstone for political and cultural identities at home. The books treating
political events do so within their social, cultural, and economic contexts.

Several books in the series examine particular wars in depth. Wars are de-
fining moments for people and eras. During the twentieth century war be-
came more widespread and terrible than ever before, encouraging new
efforts to end war through strategies and organizations of international coop-
eration and disarmament while also fueling new ideologies and instruments
of mass persuasion that fostered distrust and festered old national rivalries.
Two world wars during the century redrew the political map, slaughtered or
uprooted two generations of people, and introduced and hastened the devel-
opment of new technologies and weapons of mass destruction. The First
World War spelled the end of the old European order and spurred communist
revolution in Russia and fascism in Italy, Germany, and elsewhere. The Sec-
ond World War killed fascism and inspired the final push for freedom from
European colonial rule in Asia and Africa. It also led to the Cold War that
suffocated much of the world for almost half a century. Large wars begat
small ones, and brutal totalitarian regimes cropped up across the globe. Af-
ter (and in some ways because of) the fall of communism in eastern Europe
and the former Soviet Union, wars of competing cultures, national interests,
and political systems persisted in the struggle to make a new world order.
Continuing, too, has been the belief that military technology can achieve po-
litical ends, whether in the superior American firepower that failed to "win"
in Vietnam or in the American "smart bombs" and other military wizardry
that "won" in the Persian Gulf.

Another theme evident in the series is that throughout the century nation-
alism has continued to drive events. Whether in the Balkans in 1914 trigger-
ing World War I or in the Balkans in the 1990s threatening the post-Cold
War peace -- or in many other places -- nationalist ambitions and forces
would not die. The persistence of nationalism is yet another reminder of the
many ways that the past becomes prologue.

We thus offer the series as a modern guide to and interpretation of the his-
toric events of the twentieth century and as an invitation to consider how and
why those events have defined not only the past and present but also charted
the political, social, intellectual, cultural, and economic routes into the next
century.

Randall M. Miller
Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia

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