With some exceptions, people who grew up in the 1960s in the USA and Western Europe became used to a world on a fairly continuous trajectory of economic development, political stability and physical security. They were then joined by an increasing number of other states in the old Soviet bloc, in South Asia and in Latin America, which were becoming more democratic, stable, prosperous, peaceful and relatively free. It has been a profound shock to see all of this change. Questions about what creates and sustains intractable violent conflict and how it may be possible to find ways out of it, have not been so relevant in the lifetime of most of the people reading this book as they are now.