On Grand Strategy

By: John Lewis Gaddis

Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain

“The best education in grand strategy available in a single volume . . . a book that should be read by every American leader or would-be leader.”—The Wall Street Journal

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.

Repairs if not reinvents a long-damaged wheel

Pulls some of the greatest examples of western strategy into a single (yet complex) evolutionary frame.

This book covers important strategic history and is a good survey of classical thinkers on war.

This was a good survey of classical thinkers on war. Also touches on important practitioners.

very informative, compellingly written.

while the narrator was slow in his delivery the stories were very well written. the conclusions made by the Author were well reasoned. Thank you

What a Journey!

Excellent prose, analysis, and weaving together of seemingly disparate threads. I have to listen to this over and over...

Good, if slightly limited, read.

Overall a good book, but I had some quibbles with pauses (narrator would stop talking for an awkward, if small, amount of time) and lack of geographic diversity (while an offhand reference is made to Sun Tsu is made in the beginning, the rest is highly Eurocentric. In an age of globalism, where grand strategy necessarily competes with those of other cultures, it would have been great to get views from those other cultures.)