This article is based around a review of five books on the Council on Foreign Relations, an elite American foreign affairs think-tank, written during the 1990s. It aims to consider some of the reasons for this upsurge in academic interest in the CFR, the character of the books themselves, and how they approach and analyse the organisation. In so doing, the article takes a critical stance to the literature and suggests what a more adequate theoretical approach to the CFR might look like.
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