On Grand Strategy

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.

About the author

John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University. He is 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; The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War; We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History; The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past; and Surprise, Security, and the American Experience.