The cover of this book is a well-chosen photograph taken by the author, Paul R. Viotti, of the subject, Kenneth Waltz. It shows Waltz in his later years, with a genial smile and wearing his trademark hand-knotted bow tie. Readers can infer from the photograph that the book will be a friend's “intellectual biography.” And so it proves, though it is none the worse for that. Viotti provides some balance against the numerous detractors Waltz's work has faced over the years—much of which has owed more to the loyalty of critics to their own theory tribe than to a sustained engagement with Waltz's actual words.

Viotti informs readers that when he was a U.S. Air Force captain returning from Vietnam in 1969 he first “encountered” Waltz's writing, that Waltz became his academic adviser a few years later, and that a close relationship developed over the next half-century. In 2013, two...

You do not currently have access to this content.