There is a certain level of writing on social and political issues that stands between good journalism and genuine scholarship. Good journalism attempts to assemble and report as much pertinent data as is available, Genuine scholarship, by making clear a theoretical framework or a verifiable testing technique, considers the weight that should be given to various facts to be used for explanatory, interpretive or constructive reasons. These two books fall at that certain level (though Melman's tends more toward scholarship and Plate's toward journalism). Both men assemble a wide range of pertinent data and place it in a particular framework (for both authors this framework is their concern that America pursue a path to peace).