Francis A. Beer is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Colorado, Boulder. He received his A. B. (1960) from Harvard and M. A. (1963) and Ph.D. (1967) from the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, he has been associated in different ways with the Fondation nationale des sciences politiques and the University of Bordeaux in France; the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven in the Netherlands; the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom; the Ohio State University, the Universities of Iowa, Michigan, and Texas in the United States. His books include: Meanings of War and Peace; Peace Against War: The Ecology of International Violence and Integration and Disintegration in NATO: Processes of Alliance Cohesion and Prospects for Atlantic Community as well as related monographs on The Political Economy of Alliances and How Much War in History. He has edited Alliances: Latent War Communities in the Contemporary World. He has co-edited with Christ’l De Landtsheer Metaphorical World Politics and, with Robert Hariman, Post-Realism: The Rhetorical Turn in International Relations. He has been Chair of the Boulder Faculty Assembly and President of the International Studies Association/West. He co-edited with Ted Gurr a series of Sage books on "Violence, Conflict, Cooperation." Professor Beer is listed in Who’s Who in the World and Who’s Who in America.