By "interactive conflict resolution" (ICR) Fisher means face-to-face, small group discussions between unofficial representatives of parties (from identity groups or states) that are engaged in destructive conflict; these discussions are aimed at conflict analysis and problem solving and are facilitated by an impartial third party of "scholar-practitioners." Fisher provides a precise date, locale, and founding ancestor for the birth of ICR: a "workshop" organized by John Burton and his colleagues in London, in December, 1965, to discuss a serious conflict involving Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. The workshop, the first of several, lasted 5 days, When it was over, Fisher reports, "the delegates returned home and their respective governments reestablished diplomatic contact7' (p. 23). This characterization, with its strongly implied but unstated causality, is telling. Supporters of ICR read it and can say, yes, of course, our primordial success. Skeptics (often political realists of the machtpolitik variety, with a strong commitment-if they be academics-to hypothesis testing) read it and seethe: How do we know the workshop had anything at all to do with reestablishing diplomatic contacts? Fisher is clearly among the supporters (indeed, among the formulators) of ICR; yet, one of the virtues of this important book is that he consistently tries to address the skeptics and "realists" on their own terms-through empirically-informed theory building, on the one hand, and process and outcome assessment and evaluation, on the other.