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On Grand Strategy Hardcover – April 3, 2018
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A master class in strategic thinking, distilled from the legendary program the author has co-taught at Yale for decades
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 on what he has learned. In chapters extending from the ancient world through World War II, Gaddis assesses grand strategic theory and practice in Herodotus, Thucydides, Sun Tzu, Octavian/Augustus, St. Augustine, Machiavelli, Elizabeth I, Philip II, the American Founding Fathers, Clausewitz, Tolstoy, Lincoln, Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Isaiah Berlin. On Grand Strategy applies the sharp insights and wit readers have come to expect from Gaddis to times, places, and people he’s never written about before. For anyone interested in the art of leadership, On Grand Strategy is, in every way, a master class.
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin Press
- Publication dateApril 3, 2018
- Dimensions5.72 x 1.27 x 8.54 inches
- ISBN-101594203512
- ISBN-13978-1594203510
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“A remarkably erudite volume…[that] renders nuanced verdicts on an eclectic cohort of thinkers, writers, monarchs and conquerors…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.” —Washington Post
“Thought-provoking…The approach is highly idiosyncratic and the structure loose; it has something of the feel of a personal manifesto or intellectual memoir.” —Weekly Standard
“[An] eminently readable book by a master historian…It is a brilliant book—learned, seductively written, deep.” —The New Criterion
“Lively…Gaddis concludes with an invaluable warning that true morality embraces neither messianic interventionism nor the quest for utopianism…Instead, ethical leadership pursues the art of the possible for the greater (not the greatest) good…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 to Americans that lasting victory comes from winning what you can rather than all that you want.” —The New York Times Book Review
“An extraordinary treatise on the need to teach the principles of sound strategy to today’s leaders…The book…is a rich one. It makes sense of our world, but is also capable of beautifully crafted pithy historical judgments…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.”
—The Times (UK)
“A fine summary of the complex concepts explored in [Gaddis’s] Grand Strategy seminar, full of vivid examples of leadership and strategic thinking, from the Persian king Xerxes to Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s WWII strategies…Gaddis brings a deep knowledge of history and a pleasingly economical prose style to this rigorous study of leadership.” —Publishers Weekly
“A capacious analysis of how leaders make strategic decisions…A lively, erudite study of the past in service of the future.” —Kirkus Reviews
On The Cold War: A New History
“Outstanding . . . The most accessible distillation of that conflict yet written.” - The Boston Globe
“Energetically written and lucid, it makes an ideal introduction to the subject.” - The New York Times
“A fresh and admirably concise history . . . Gaddis’s mastery of the material, his fluent style and eye for the telling anecdote make his new work a pleasure.” - The Economist
On George F. Kennan: An American Life
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
''Magisterial . . . [Kennan] bids fair to be as close to the final word as possible on one of the most important, complex, moving, challenging, and exasperating American public servants . . . We can be grateful to John Lewis Gaddis for bringing Kennan back to us, thoughtful, human, self-centered, contradictory, inspirational—a permanent spur as consciences are wont to be. Masterfully researched, exhaustively documented, Gaddis' moving work gives us a figure with whom, however one might differ on details, it was a privilege to be a contemporary.'' - Henry A. Kissinger, New York Times Book Review
“[A] first-rate biography . . . Kennan's life maps right onto twentieth-century political history, and no one is better qualified than Gaddis to lead the way through it . . . Gaddis has written with care and elegance, and he has produced a biography whose fineness is worthy of its subject.” –The New Yorker
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- Publisher : Penguin Press; First Edition (April 3, 2018)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1594203512
- ISBN-13 : 978-1594203510
- Item Weight : 1.11 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.72 x 1.27 x 8.54 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #116,291 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #211 in Business Decision Making
- #414 in Decision-Making & Problem Solving
- #1,775 in Leadership & Motivation
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I will acknowledge here that I am a most biased reviewer: I was a student of Professor Gaddis in his Yale seminar “Grand Strategy” as well as served as one of his teaching assistants in his undergraduate class “History of the Cold War.” And I remain friends with him. But I think the source of my bias is a virtue to you: insight based upon experience and a personal relationship of profound consequence (at least to me).
Some reviewers have commented that “On Grand Strategy” is a “meandering, mostly thematic route through a variety of topics such as Athenian democracy; Caesar’s mentorship of his successor, Octavian; and the interplay between religious belief, nationalism, and the motiving power states have over their citizens” while concluding that such “frivolous, cryptic anecdotes that bounce aimlessly across time periods and characters…ensures such [strategic] questions remain unanswered” (Alexander Kirss, “Review: Does Grand Strategy Matter?” in Strategic Studies Quarterly, Vol. 12 No. 4, pg 116-132). While somewhat true, this is inaccurate—such critique misses the point: Grand Strategy does matter and Gaddis approaches a weighty and infinitely nuanced idea with a graceful elegance and lifetime of experience in an approachable and readable way.
Rather, I tend to side with Gordon M. Goldstein in his “Washington Post” review of “On Grand Strategy,” “How great leaders make good and terrible military decisions.” Goldstein acknowledges that the book illuminates “misapplied strategic ambition and miscalculated military intervention” and “bind ancient and modern history to provide practical guidance to the contemporary strategist.”
While a renowned historian of the Cold War and famously the official biographer of George Kennan (“George F. Kennan: An American Life”), “On Grand Strategy” will be a classic long after the Cold War has faded from human memory. Dashing, moving, witty, even sly—“On Grand Strategy” is a magisterial work that I give to you, the dear reader and strategist, my highest unqualified recommendation. Read this book!
Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2019
I will acknowledge here that I am a most biased reviewer: I was a student of Professor Gaddis in his Yale seminar “Grand Strategy” as well as served as one of his teaching assistants in his undergraduate class “History of the Cold War.” And I remain friends with him. But I think the source of my bias is a virtue to you: insight based upon experience and a personal relationship of profound consequence (at least to me).
Some reviewers have commented that “On Grand Strategy” is a “meandering, mostly thematic route through a variety of topics such as Athenian democracy; Caesar’s mentorship of his successor, Octavian; and the interplay between religious belief, nationalism, and the motiving power states have over their citizens” while concluding that such “frivolous, cryptic anecdotes that bounce aimlessly across time periods and characters…ensures such [strategic] questions remain unanswered” (Alexander Kirss, “Review: Does Grand Strategy Matter?” in Strategic Studies Quarterly, Vol. 12 No. 4, pg 116-132). While somewhat true, this is inaccurate—such critique misses the point: Grand Strategy does matter and Gaddis approaches a weighty and infinitely nuanced idea with a graceful elegance and lifetime of experience in an approachable and readable way.
Rather, I tend to side with Gordon M. Goldstein in his “Washington Post” review of “On Grand Strategy,” “How great leaders make good and terrible military decisions.” Goldstein acknowledges that the book illuminates “misapplied strategic ambition and miscalculated military intervention” and “bind ancient and modern history to provide practical guidance to the contemporary strategist.”
While a renowned historian of the Cold War and famously the official biographer of George Kennan (“George F. Kennan: An American Life”), “On Grand Strategy” will be a classic long after the Cold War has faded from human memory. Dashing, moving, witty, even sly—“On Grand Strategy” is a magisterial work that I give to you, the dear reader and strategist, my highest unqualified recommendation. Read this book!
Strategy is a slippery word; being at once abstract and concrete, and massively scalable. Appending the modifier grand to it pushes it into the realm of esoterica, which perhaps suits just fine those whose business it is to teach it. Gaddis, in one rather short book succeeds in lassoing all of those issues and binding them together like the legs of a steer that has just been roped, making them unable to slip out from the reader's grasp. Gaddis takes us on an historical journey, not in search of principles but in search of balance. Although he never mentions it, his approach is akin to the concept of dialectical materialism; thesis, antithesis, and ultimately synthesis. He helps the reader find synthesis through balancing incompatible and contradictory ideas. Grand strategy is both personal and specific and broad and abstract; men with specific character traits make decisions that affect whole populations and history. There are no principles, only mental states, balancing antonyms. He uses the metaphor of foxes, who know many things with hedgehogs who know one big thing. As he proceeds through history, his narrative is a bit like a murder mystery; which of these approaches is superior? Who dunit? He leads us step by step through the evidence. He finds much guilt along the way, but in the end takes us to a place where we find new criteria for judgment. I won't short circuit the plot by giving away the verdict, but I can say that while Gaddis is successful in finding clarity, it is not something that can be expressed quickly and easily.
If I had a critique of the book it would be that I was disappointed that Gaddis does not take on more recent examples such as Vietnam or even Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor does he address the current geopolitical struggle between the United States and China. There is some wisdom to this, as it reflects the guidance Admiral Stan Turner gave to the Naval War College Strategy and Policy faculty in 1972 that to avoid the emotions that would cloud any discussion of Vietnam in the classroom, the curriculum should employ cases from more distant history. Certainly, in this book as in the Strategy and Policy course at Newport, one can detect underlying logic that attended the Peloponesian War in current events, but that synthesis is left to the reader. Nonetheless, I would have liked to see him parse George W Bush and his advisors the way he did Pericles and Lincoln.
This is an enjoyable book, if such an adjective is possilbe for one on grand strategy, and is especially so if the reader has already read Lawence Friedman's book on strategy.
I describe this book as a collection of stories for a reason. The political theory guiding this book is more Aesopian than Aristotelian. The word "strategy" as used in this book is not expressed in a practical sense but rather as a way of thinking about problems and how to solve them. Throughout the book, Gaddis uses the framing device of the fox and the hedgehog, a parable used for the argument of a 1953 book of that name by Isaiah Berlin.
Gaddis relies extensively on Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Lincoln to add a gilded sheen to the frame around this homage to Berlin. However, it is not a book on strategy. It is an aphorism on balance, a cautionary tale against unconstrained boldness but also indecisive timidity, while primarily serving as a panegyric to Isaiah Berlin.
If one feels I am hammering the Isaiah Berlin angle a bit too forcefully, then perhaps this book is not for you. Gaddis treats each episode in this book as a foundational element to his grand argument, which is finally presented in a somewhat unsatisfying manner in the book's last chapter, unsurprisingly entitled "Isaiah Berlin."