The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939

E.H. Carr's Twenty Years' Crisis is a classic work in International Relations. Published in 1939, on the eve of World War II, it was immediately recognized by friend and foe alike as a defining work in the fledgling discipline. The author was one of the most influential and controversial intellectuals of the twentieth century. The issues and themes he develops in this book continue to have relevance to modern day concerns with power and its distribution in the international system. 

E.H. Carr was born in 1882, joined the Foreign Office in 1916 and resigned 20 year later to become the fourth Woodrow Wilson Professor in the Department of International Politics at the University College of Wales Aberystwyth. Here he published seven books including The Twenty Years' Crisis in 1939. The following year he joined the Ministry of Information before moving on to become the Assistant Editor of The Times. In 1945 he began work on his massive History of Soviet Russia. He was elected a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1995. The author of the bestselling What is History? In 1961, Carr died in 1982 at the age of 90.