Original interpretations
Richard Thornton’s interpretation of American foreign policy has stood the test of over a decade of scrutiny since the Nixon-Kissinger Years first appeared. In this paperback edition, he has supplemented his original account with new materiel: including that from Kissinger’s third volume of memoirs, William Burr’s, The Kissinger Transcripts: The Top Secret Talks with Beijing and Moscow, and memoir material from one of his main interlocutors, Anatoly Dobrynin. All reinforce the original interpretations of this book.

The most significant revision, however, comes in the chapter on the Watergate crisis. Here, for the first time, based on congressional investigative material and other sources, the author puts forth a fully developed interpretation of the crisis from the perspective of factional politics and foreign policy which goes substantially beyond the original account.

RICHARD C. THORNTON is Professor of History and International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., where he has taught for the past thirty-four years. A retired, reserve U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, he has served as a consultant to the Department of State, and lectured around the world for USIA. His major works include: Odd Man Out: Truman, Stalin, Mao, and the Origins of the Korean War; The Falklands Sting; Reagan, Thatcher, and Argentina’s Bomb; The Carter Years: Toward A New Global Order; and China: A Political History 1917-1980.