Ambassador Bremer is one of the living legends of the Mexican Foreign Service, and indeed, one of the brightest public servants in the last 30 years, formed with an intellectual rigour and a humanist view of history which, sadly, is barely seen among the new generations in civil service. This is why I bought this book just before going into an hour long queue, and this is why the book accompanied me everywhere I went for the next week. Ambassador Bremer takes a brilliant look on how diplomatic agreements (as a matter of fact, the principal instruments for peace in human history) are influenced not only by national interests and the dominant zeitgeist. He takes the view that psychology of the leaders and negotiators, and perhaps more importantly, their sense of history, is what can make a lasting agreement or a hiatus between wars. An essential intermediate book for those of us who work or are interested in foreign affairs.