Three recent texts on international relations, chosen out of the welter of new books and revisions that have appeared in the last few years, are the subject of this review. They have been picked because in some ways each is an excellent and important work. They are also books which in their strengths and weaknesses complement each other. Each author or set of authors has a distinct emphasis in outlook and in method, but at the same time the books exhibit a core of agreement about certain fundamental aspects of world politics today that indicates a growing consensus among contemporary analysts and scholars. A comparative review of this type can thus be used not only to evaluate the suitability of these books as texts and their contributions to international relations theory, but also to assess this consensus and to indicate its main outlines.