While conflicts of class, ideology and political systems have receded in the post-Cold War world, divisions based on group identity--cultural, ethnic, religious, and national--have assumed new importance. From Bosnia to Belfast and Burundi, from California to Kazakhstan, the difficulty of defining and reconciling group identities, and relating them to state structures, has become one of the central problems of our time. In this book, leading scholars and writers have collaborated with Edward Mortimer to illuminate the issues of ethnic and national identity that have emerged as central to the...

During his momentous time as Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan played a decisive role in launching the Millennium Development Goals, establishing the International Criminal Court, and articulating the Responsibility to Protect as a guiding principle for international action. In 2001 - just after 9/11 - he and the UN jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize, 'for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world.' These and other crucial events - including the crises over Kosovo and East Timor, and the war in Iraq - are encapsulated in this book of Kofi Annan's key speeches from...