'Strategic Rivalries in World Politics makes several substantive contributions to our understanding of rivalries. First, the conceptual and empirical distinctions between spatial and positional rivalries are a major contribution to the literature that treats all rivalries as the same. Second, a number of the empirical findings challenge or reinforce past findings about rivalries and thereby extend our knowledge of those phenomena. Yet, the contributions are not confined to the rivalry genre. A nice feature of the book is that the authors use rivalries to gain insights into the validity and utility of some important models and works in international conflict. They demonstrate that considering international conflict in the rivalry context changes or enhances the insights gained from several prominent approaches.' Paul F. Diehl, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign