This book provides an authoritative account of the controversy about the first great debate in the field of International Relations. Of all the self-images of International Relations, none is as pervasive and enduring as the notion that a great debate pitting idealists against realists took place in the 1940s.

The story of the first great debate continues to structure the contemporary identity of International Relations, yet in recent years revisionist historians have challenged the conventional wisdom that the field experienced such a debate. Drawing on expert contributors working...