David L. Anderson, in his article on the Vietnam War in this text, observes that “many revisionists, whether radical or conservative, maintain that present thinking and theories about the past matter in the same way” (323); that issues of American power, intervention and international policy are part of the historical continuum that links past, present, and future. This succinct statement of the historian's role in interpreting and integrating the past into the full range of human experience could well serve as the credo of the New Diplomatic History so ably represented by the twenty-six disparate historiographical essays that comprise this volume.

Although its unifying theme is traditional – changing conceptions of power, its foci, and its application over time – these essays give ample evidence of how (and to what degree) the ways in which historians have understood power dynamics have changed in response to criticism from social and cultural historians. Especially evident here is a distinct turn away from exclusive focus on high-level governmental agencies and departments and ambassadorial negotiations towards consideration of the actions and viewpoints of those typically ignored in traditional diplomatic history.

The articles in this collection are not arranged according to a single organizational principle; some take a sweeping general view of current trends in the field, some pursue a traditional chronological narrative, and others have a geographic focus, but the bulk of them center on a single discrete subject – World War I, the Vietnam War, détente, and so on. They represent the best work of a new generation of diplomatic historians, whose major scholarly work has been published in the post-Vietnam War era.

Each essay surveys the historical interpretation of its subject, providing capsule summaries of different historians' arguments, and offering a tightly-focussed bibliography at its conclusion. These bibliographic appendices do not include classic earlier interpretations, but generally offer a good summative representation of recent work. The eighty-two-page general bibliography at the end of the volume partially corrects these omissions, but it too is heavily weighted towards recent works.

The Companion should prove an invaluable reference source for scholars and students in the field, providing a quick interpretative overview of the subjects treated in the articles and a reasonably comprehensive introduction to the current literature in the field.