This is an excellent history of the Peace Conference that followed World War I. The Conference is still affecting what is happening in the present. As a result of the conference, new countries were formed (e.g., Yugoslavia, Iraq, and other Middle Eastern countries) and Poland was resurrected from the dead. One of teh things I learned was how little Woodraw Wilson and the American delegation knew so little about Europe and the Middle East and the people living there. People were treated as pawns (e,g., should this ethnic group be granted a nation of their own or be placed in another country where they will be a persecuted minority?). The author paints excellent portraits of all the major statesmen and also many minor ones. Anyone who wants to know learn some of the reasons for a second world war and the reasons for the map of the Middle East (need I say, oil!), should read this excellent book.