Extending from the late nineteenth century, when new Western Empires and old Asian Empires dominated vast areas of the world and ruled most of its peoples, into the early twenty-first century, when the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War appeared to herald a new era of peaceful relations among the world's nation-states, Daniel R. Brower's, The World in the Twentieth Century: From Empires to Nations, examines the cycle of creation and destruction integral to the rise and fall of modern empires and new nation-states. In the Sixth Edition, two new chapters and additional material introduced throughout the text combine to bring a new clarity to the story of global relations, violence, and the quest for national identity. Book jacket.