Abstract

Book ReviewsWilliam Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni versity Press, 1995), xii, 484 pp. Cloth $35.00 SAGE Publications, Inc.1997DOI: 10.1177/002190969703200116 Steven I.Levine Boulder Run Research Hillsborough, North Carolina, U.S.A. The Korean War has enjoyed a certain vogue in the last decade. Recent scholarship has invalidated the once paradigmatic view among mainstream Western scholars of the war as a Manichaean cold war test of wills between the Free World and totalitarian communism. Bruce Cumings reminded us that the conflict originated in the political battles of Korea and was not fought on some abstract cold war chessboard, but in the mountains and valleys of that tortured land. Chen Jian clarified the reasons why China entered the war in October 1950. Rosemary Foot enriched our understanding of wartime alliance politics and the negotiation of the Korean armistice agreement. William Stueck's international history of the Korean War represents both a synthesis of the recent scholarship as well as a reinterpretation of the war that is certain to provoke vigorous debate. While recognizing the peninsular origins of the war, Stueck insists that the significance of the Korean War resides largely in the impact it had upon the international