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An older colleague recently observed to me that today we stand further removed in time from the end of World War II than Americans at the beginning of that conflict were from the Spanish American War. To those Americans of 1939, he said, the war with Spain seemed almost antediluvian, while to us World War II lives vividly in memory, and its consequences still shape our lives. As a student of modern American foreign policy, I found my colleague's observation particularly appropriate. American and Soviet soldiers still face each other in the middle of Germany, and Europe remains divided along the lines roughly set by the liberating armies. Yet could we now be facing major changes? Will an agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons in Europe, and glasnost in the Soviet Union transform this environment? Will the postwar division of Europe come to an end? What will be the consequences for the United States?

In legislatures and committees, a number of issues are voted on separately, leading to an outcome consisting of positions on each of these issues. I investigate the effects this separation of issues has on collective choices, assuming a very abstract collective choice model, whose assumptions are presupposed by many less abstract models, notably spatial models. Assuming the model, if there exists an undominated outcome (one to which no winning coalition prefers any other feasible outcome), it must be chosen in the absence of vote trading, although vote trading can (perversely) lead to a very different outcome. But vote trading does not necessarily lead to a "voting paradox" situation, contrary to several recent papers. The model enables us to define a natural solution concept for the case where every feasible outcome is dominated. Variations on this concept are explored. The effects of weakening the model are investigated.

The point has been made that vote trading may result in Pareto inefficient legislative outcome; yet vote trading can also result in beneficial consequences for legislators. In every legislative meeting, the outcome that would prevail in the absence of vote trading must be Pareto inefficient; there must be at least one potential vote trade that would make every legislator better off than he would be without vote trading. An example of legislative decision-making processes illustrates this case. Special reference is made to "The Paradox of Vote Trading," by W. H. Riker & S. J. Brams (American Political Science Review, 1973, 66) & "Problems of Majority Voting" by G. Tullock (Journal of Political Economy, 1959, 67) with respect to clarification of certain assumptions concerning the effects of vote trading. C. Grindle.

Over the past six decades, Henry Kissinger has been America's most consistently praised - and reviled - public figure. He was hailed as a "miracle worker" for his peacemaking in the Middle East, pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union, negotiation of an end to the Vietnam War, and secret plan to open the United States to China. He was assailed from the left and from the right for his indifference to human rights, complicity in the pointless sacrifice of American and Vietnamese lives, and reliance on deception and intrigue. Was he a brilliant master strategist - "the 20th century's greatest 19th century statesman" - or a cold-blooded monster who eroded America's moral standing for the sake of self-promotion? In this masterfully researched biography, the renowned diplomatic historian Thomas Schwartz offers an authoritative, and fair-minded, answer to this question. While other biographers have engaged in hagiography or demonology, Schwartz takes a measured view of his subject. He recognizes Kissinger's successes and acknowledges that Kissinger thought seriously and with great insight about the foreign policy issues of his time, while also recognizing his failures, his penchant for backbiting, and his reliance on ingratiating and fawning praise of the president as a source of power. Throughout, Schwartz stresses Kissinger's artful invention of himself as a celebrity diplomat and his domination of the medium of television news. He also notes Kissinger's sensitivity to domestic and partisan politics, complicating - and undermining - the image of the far-seeing statesman who stands above the squabbles of popular strife.

Thomas Alan Schwartz: Die Atlantikbrücke. John McCloy und das Nachkriegs-Deutschland. Ullstein Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin 1992. 560 Seiten, 58,- DM