Amazon.com description: Product Description: The fourth edition of "The World Since 1945" moves beyond the demise of the Soviet Union into the uncertain post-Cold War age - the chaotic "new world order". The text has been updated to discuss issues at the forefront of world politics today: the changing character of the European Union, events in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the movement toward resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the new order in South Africa, the sharpening of the economic and political conflict between the United States and its trading partners in East Asia, and the unresolved disputes between North and South Korea and the two Chinas. There are also interpretive revisions based on new documents and studies of the Cold War, the Middle East conflicts, the nuclear arms race (including the Cuban missile crisis) and events in Afghanistan, El Salvador and India. Comprehensive, yet concise, this study of the major political, economic and ideological patterns in the global arena since World War II - written for introductory courses in international relations or world history - serves as a corrective to often one-sided, Western-centred approaches to the salient issues of recent decades.