In his book An Unwritten Future: Realism and Uncertainty in World Politics (Princeton University Press, 2022), Boston College Professor of Political Science and International Studies Jonathan Kirshner offers a fresh reassessment of classical realism and reveals how this enduring approach—and not its would-be successors, such as structural realism—provides the best understanding of crucial events in the international political arena. Kirshner illustrates how a classical realist approach gives new insights into major upheavals of the 20th century as as well as into the vital questions of the present—such as the implications of China’s rise, the ways that social and economic change alter the balance of power and the nature of international conflict, and the consequences of the end of the U.S.-led postwar order for the future of world politics. An Unwritten Future received the 2023 Jervis-Schroeder Best Book Award Honorable Mention from the International History & Politics Section of American Political Science Association. Kirshner discussed his book in this Q&A from his publisher. Kirshner has also penned a book review of The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism by Martin Wolf for the Los Angeles Review of Books. Kirshner is the author of numerous other books, including American Power After the Financial Crisis, Hollywood’s Last Golden Age: Politics, Society, and the Seventies Film in America, and the novel Urban Flight.