Bringing together specialists from the fields of international relations, history and politics, this work attempts to answer three main questions regarding the 20th century. It considers what the century’s salient characteristics have been, what else is ending as the century ends, and whether Churchill was right in calling it a disappointing century . As the contributors address these issues, they also discuss whether it has been an American century or a nuclear century, and whether it marks the end of history , the triumph of Western liberalism, or merely the end of the Cold War.