The American Society of International Law’s First Century: 1906-2006. By Frederic L. Kirgis. Leiden, Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2006. Pp. xxviii, 632. $146.

From the late 1890s until 1916, a small group dedicated to the peaceful settlement of international disputes met annually at the Lake Mohonk Mountain House in Ulster County, New York. The group shared the vision of establishing a permanent institution that would apply legal principles to resolve international disputes. During the1905 Lake Mohonk Conference, the participants were asked to move beyond rhetoric and take meaningful measures to promote peace and justice through international arbitration. Among those who rose to the challenge were George W. Kirchwey, dean of the Columbia University School of Law; Dr. James Brown Scott, a law professor and later the solicitor of the U.S. Department of State; and Robert Lansing, later the U.S. secretary of state. Others, including U.S. secretary of state Elihu Root, Oscar S. Straus, who in 1906 became the U.S. secretary of commerce and labor, and industrialist Andrew Carnegie, joined in the undertaking.