Overview

'A timely historical overview of the constituents of leadership from the classical era to the present' New Statesman John Lewis Gaddis, the distinguished historian of the Cold War, has for almost two decades co-taught grand strategy at Yale University with his colleagues Charles Hill and Paul Kennedy. Now, in On Grand Strategy, Gaddis reflects with insight and wit on what he has learned. In Chapters extending from the ancient world to the Second World War, Gaddis assesses grand strategic theory and practice in Herodotus, Thucydides, Sun Tzu, Octavian/Augustus, Saint Augustine, Machiavelli, Elizabeth I, Philip II, the American Founding Fathers, Clausewitz, Tolstoy, Lincoln, Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Isaiah Berlin. For anyone involved or interested in the art of leadership, On Grand Strategy is, in every way, a master class.

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9780141987224

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Reviews

An extraordinary treatise on the need to teach the principles of sound strategy to today's leaders... It makes sense of our world, but is also capable of beautifully crafted pithy historical judgements. ... It is a book that cares about liberty, choice and a moral compass, that warns against the hubris of an angry Bonaparte on the turn in a Russian winter, against leaders who do not listen or learn. A training manual for our troubled times -- Roger Boyes * The Times * On Grand Strategy is many things - a thoughtful validation of the liberal arts, an argument for literature over social science, an engaging reflection on university education and some timely advice that lasting victory comes from winning what you can rather than all that you want. -- Victor Davis Hanson * The New York Times * A brilliant book - learned, seductively written, deep -- Roger Kimball * New Criterion * Gaddis has indisputably earned the right to plow different fields of historical inquiry, which he does in On Grand Strategy with self-evident glee and peripatetic curiosity -- Gordon M. Goldstein * Washington Post * A long walk with a single, delightful mind, which makes it much easier for the reader to comprehend the lessons that cohere across continents and millennia -- John Nagl * Wall Street Journal *

Author Information

John Lewis Gaddis is an internationally renowned historian of the Cold War and has been called 'the dean of Cold War historians' by The New York Times. He is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University and the author of numerous books, including The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947, Strategies of Containment- A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy, We Now Know- Rethinking Cold War History, The Landscape of History and Surprise, Security and the American Experience. George F. Kennan, An American Life won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. He is a 2005 winner of the US National Humanities Medal and lives in New Haven.

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