This volume offers a unique perspective on a turbulent and dangerous age by focusing on the activities and accomplishments of its diplomats. Its essays discuss the policies of ambassadors, foreign ministers and heads of state from Acheson and Adenauer and from Sadat and Gromyko, as well as the special problems of the professionals in the foreign offices and the role of the media in modern diplomacy. Expanding the field of inquiry covered by its predecessor, "The Diplomats, 1919-1939", which concentrated on Europe and the coming of World War II, these essays showcase the major diplomatic practitioners of the period against the broader background of the problems and crises that confronted them - among others, the Polish question at the end of World War II, the onset of the Cold War, the defeat of EDC in 1954, the Suez crisis, Khrushchev's Berlin note in 1958, the Middle East War of 1967 and the oil shock of 1973, the Iranian revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This account of the pendular swing from crisis to detente and back again is given a global perspective by careful treatment of the diplomacy of new nations like India, Communist China and Israel, and of the transformation of the Middle East and Japan.