Correspondence, memoranda, journal excerpts, speeches, lectures, writings, reports, notes, testimony, interview transcripts, minutes, travel files, news clippings, family papers, printed matter, photographs, and other papers relating primarily to Brzezinski's years as national security advisor in the Jimmy Carter administration and his professional career following the Carter presidency. Documents his foreign travel during the Carter administration; teaching at Columbia University and Johns Hopkins University; association with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS; affiliated with Georgetown University until 1987) and other commissions and organizations including American-Ukrainian Advisory Committee, AmeriCares, Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy, Council on Foreign Relations, Freedom House, Jamestown Foundation (Washington, D.C.), National Endowment for Democracy, Public International Law and Policy Group Balkan Action Council, Trilateral Commission, and U.S. Chemical Warfare Review Commission. Also documents Brzezinski's work in behalf of the Polish-American Enterprise Fund and support for a Brzezinski presidential candidacy in Poland. Includes Brzezinski and Roman family papers relating chiefly to Brzezinski's father and Polish diplomat, Tadeusz Brzezinski, and to his service primarily as consul-general in Canada and his leadership in Polish-Canadian affairs.

Part II subjects include U.S. relations with Azerbaijan, Chechni︠a︡, China, Europe, Iran, Kosovo, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Soviet Union, and Ukraine; and Brzezinski's support for the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Topics include the Iranian hostage crisis; normalization of relations with China; Middle East peace negotiations; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; Strategic Arms Limitation Talks II; the Iraq War; the War on Terrorism; the National Security Council; and Billy Carter's relationship with the Libyan government.

Part II includes memoranda of conversations with individuals such as Madeleine Korbel Albright, Yasir Arafat, Samuel R. Berger, George Bush, Deng Xiaoping, Mikhail Gorbachev, Richard M. Nixon, Condoleezza Rice, Brent Scowcroft, George Pratt Shultz, and Lech Walęsa. Correspondents include Kenneth L. Adelman, Madeleine Korbel Albright, Richard V. Allen, Les Aspin, Samuel R. Berger, C. Fred Bergsten, Harold Brown, George Bush, Jimmy Carter, Warren Christopher, Richard C. Holbrooke, Samuel P. Huntington, Henry Kissinger, Anthony Lake, Richard M. Nixon, David Rockefeller, William Safire, Brent Scowcroft, George Pratt Shultz, Margaret Thatcher, and Cyrus R. Vance.