Where we are now

In reviewing any set of books, it is not often that one has the pleasure of welcoming an obvious classic. There is one here: John Vasquez's The Power of Power Politics, and much of this review article will be devoted to saying why. The other books fit together with it very well. They comprise two undergraduate textbooks, by Chan and by Russett and Starr; two lively contributions from the redoubtable John Burton; and an interesting collection of papers on the inter-paradigm debate, edited and commented upon in a rather muddled way by Maghroori and Ramberg. In different ways, all the books are concerned with the same two problems. How can we explain international relations? And how should we present to students what we think we know about it?