Only one country in the world-Switzerland-is a direct democracy, in which, to an extent, the people pass their own laws, judge the constitutionality of statutes, and even have written, in effect, their own constitution. In this propitious volume, Gregory Fossedal reports on the politics and social fabric of what James Bryce has called "the nation that has taken the democratic idea to its furthest extent." The lessons Fossedal presents, at a time of dissatisfaction with the role of money and privileged elites in many Western democracies, are at once timely and urgent.

In October 1979, a series of potentially catastrophic events was set into motion: President Park Chung-hee was assassinated, South Korean officers staged a coup d'etat, and South Korean troops brutally suppressed civilian demonstrators during the controversial Kwangju uprising. Any one of these incidents could have sparked another major conflict on the Korean Peninsula. General Wickham contends war was avoided largely because of resolute action taken by the governments of the United States and the Republic of Korea, and because of the combat readiness of U.S. and South Korean forces....

The intricate diplomacy that led to the peace agreement in Bosnia, known as the Dayton Accords, is here revealed in unprecedented detail. Based on thousands of still-classified government documents and dozens of interviews with key participants, this is a comprehensive story of high-level diplomacy, told from the inside.