The single organizing fact of the Cold War was “the bomb.” In our present age of unipolarity, globalization, and the clash of civilizations, it is useful to remember that our current complexities exist only because the previous age of stark simplicity has passed into history. The decades from the end of World War II until the fall of Communism were years shaped by a nuclear standoff. The threat of nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union framed the politics and culture of the age. This framing was especially apparent in the 1950s and 1960s, before arms-control agreements lent an air of manageability to nuclear politics.

The American political system has many features that set itapart from other governments of the world, but not all areequally apparent. One distinctive aspect is the length andimportance of the transition period from one presidentialadministration to another. In most countries the passage ofpower occurs almost as soon as the election results are known(consider, e.g., the rapid assumption of power by PresidentKostunica after Slobodan Milosevic admitted defeat in theSeptember 2000 Yugoslav election), but in the United Statesroughly ten weeks elapse between the election and inaugu-ration. The American approach, as Charles Jones puts it inthis outstanding book, is to transfer power at a "leisurelypace."