Untying the Knot represents a brave effort to untangle one of the most complex national security challenges confronting the United States in the current security environment. The paramount status of the Taiwan issue, which constitutes the most dangerous flashpoint in the world today, has been somewhat obscured by the global war on terrorism and the nuclear overtones of crises involving Iran, North Korea, and South Asia. Nevertheless, the Taiwan issue is unique among these security challenges in that a crisis involving the island represents a wholly plausible scenario for major war between two nuclear-armed great powers. The truly devastating consequences of such a conflict, not only for the belligerents but for global security as a whole, underline the fundamental importance of this book. As one of the nation’s foremost experts on the Taiwan quandary, Bush demonstrates encyclopedic knowledge concerning both the origins of the dispute and, in particular, the fast moving pace of developments during the past decade. Scholars and national security practitioners will find that this new tome serves as an invaluable reference on narrow but important aspects of the Taiwan problem, ranging from security dimensions of Taipei’s evolving trade policy with the mainland (“avoiding haste” to “active opening”) to the sensitive issue of passports. Bush’s analyses regarding broader issues that are vital to any understanding of the Taiwan issue, such as Chinese nationalism and the nature of Taiwan’s exceedingly complex political landscape, represent superb surveys of available scholarship and are quite insightful. These insights sometimes reflect Bush’s extensive personal involvement in the issues under discussion. Bush describes, for example, the surprise of Taiwan Foreign Minister Eugene Chien mere hours after the announcement of the major constitution referendum initiative by Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian (p. 223). Bush also analyzes a variety of interesting PRC discussions. For instance, the intricate treatment of PRC scholar Su Ge’s important Chinese-