The American strategist Bernard Brodie called Clausewitz's "On War" not only the greatest but the only truly great book on war. For Engels, Clausewitz was a star of the first order, and Marx and Mao referred to him as a genius. Despite these laudatory words, the number of people who have read his book is much smaller than those who speak of it. Beatrice Heuser therefore offers an introduction to reading the text, resolving many of its contradictions and making its complexity easier to understand. On the other hand, Heuser shows how much Clausewitz has in common with other strategists of his time and how many ideas attributed solely to him have older origins, while also highlighting how he has uniquely transcended them all. It also becomes clear how, over nearly two centuries, strategists have...