James T. Shotwell, Bryce Professor of the History of International Relations at Columbia University, devoted most of his life, as he put it, "to the organization of peace." Considering the period his life spanned — he died at 90 in 1965, having studied and taught at Columbia for nearly 50 years — this was no small project. He was present at, indeed instrumental in, the creation of some of the most important international institutions of the twentieth century. He believed that his was the beginning of a new era, a time in which rapid technological advances demanded new conceptions of how states resolved their differences. Both in his scholarship and in his constant, restless button-holing of the rich and powerful around the world, he argued that in the modern world peace is not merely the absence of war but something that needs to be planned and organized. He did all he could to encourage that organization, and in doing so he helped provoke an entirely new academic field — international relations — and proposed many of the policies and instruments by which governments today approach management of their common affairs.