Samuel Flagg Bemis was a pioneer in America of the idea that to understand the history of international relations one must study the archives of every participating nation, weaving a narrative from the multiple points of view. Almost sixty years after the first of his books was published, and nearly twenty-five years after the last appeared, his works remain standard accounts supplemented but not superseded by the work of other scholars.

Bemis was born in 1891 in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he and his two younger brothers were the seventh New England generation of his family. When Bemis was still a child the family moved from Worcester to the 145-acre family farm at Alum Pond near the village of Sturbridge. There Bemis's most vivid childhood memories were formed. Almost seventy years later he recalled that time fondly: "How good to have had in the nineteenth century--that happiest century in the...