In the early 1990s, Carlos Barros launched a discussion group, Historia a Debate, in Santiago de Compostela (Spain), concerned with the status of historical inquiry internationally at the turn to the twenty-first century. A first conference in 1993 was followed by a lively exchange in the internet with participants not only from Spain and Ibero-America, but increasingly also from Western Europe and North America. The present volume contains important essays from the second conference held in 1999, many of which for the first time in English. The key note is how historians are responding in their writings to the dramatically changing realities since 1989. All major currents of thought are treated. The authors are keenly aware of the challenges created by globalization and seek a middle road between the objectivism of traditional positivism and the extreme relativism of postmodernist advocates. This is a volume that deserves to be read by historians and others concerned with contemporary currents of thought.