"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.

'A training manual for our troubled times ... 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 hubris' Roger Boyes, The Times John Lewis Gaddis, the distinguished historian and acclaimed author of The Cold War, has for almost two decades co-taught the grand strategy seminar 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 through World War II, 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 the past 16 years Gaddis has taught a course on grand strategy to students at Yale University. Reading his book, you wish every university could offer it. Gaddis roves across the centuries, offering advice on subjects from statecraft and warfare to leading a worthwhile life' Phillip Delves Broughton, Evening Standard

A brilliantly arresting historical work, John Lewis Gaddis's The Cold War takes us as never before to the time when the world stood on the brink of destruction. In 1945 war came to an end. But a whole new terror was only just beginning... Here is the truth behind every spy thriller you've read: why America and the Soviet Union became locked in a deadly stalemate; how close we came to nuclear catastrophe; what was really going on in the minds of leaders from Stalin to Mao Zedong, Ronald Reagan to Mikhail Gorbachev, how secret agents plotted and East German holidaymakers helped the Berlin Wall fall. It is a story of crisis talks and subterfuge, tyrants and power struggles - and of ordinary people changing the course of history. 'Gripping' Len Deighton 'Superb ... brimful of racy incident' Independent on Sunday 'A lively and readable history' The Times 'Force 9 on the Richter scale' Spectator John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University, and 'the dean of cold war historians' (The New York Times). He is the author of numerous books, including Security and the American Experience, the book recently pressed on his cabinet and senior security staff by President Bush.

The adean of Cold War historiansa ("The New York Times") now presents the definitive account of the global confrontation that dominated the last half of the twentieth century. Drawing on newly opened archives and the reminiscences of the major players, John Lewis Gaddis explains not just what happened but "why"afrom the months in 1945 when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. went from alliance to antagonism to the barely averted holocaust of the Cuban Missile Crisis to the maneuvers of Nixon and Mao, Reagan and Gorbachev. Brilliant, accessible, almost Shakespearean in its drama, "The Cold War" stands as a triumphant summation of the era that, more than any other, shaped our own.

What is history and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history a science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and other questions in this short, witty, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft, as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today.
Gaddis points out that while the historical method is more sophisticated than most historians realize, it doesn't require unintelligible prose to explain. Like cartographers mapping landscapes, historians represent what they can never replicate. In doing so, they combine the techniques of artists, geologists, paleontologists, and evolutionary biologists. Their approaches parallel, in intriguing ways, the new sciences of chaos, complexity, and criticality. They don't much resemble what happens in the social sciences, where the pursuit of independent variables functioning with static systems seems increasingly divorced from the world as we know it. So who's really being scientific and who isn't? This question too is one Gaddis explores, in ways that are certain to spark interdisciplinary controversy.
Written in the tradition of Marc Bloch and E.H. Carr, The Landscape of History is at once an engaging introduction to the historical method for beginners, a powerful reaffirmation of it for practitioners, a startling challenge to social scientists, and an effective skewering of post-modernist claims that we can't know anything at all about the past. It will be essential reading for anyone who reads, writes, teaches, or cares about history.

September 11, 2001, distinguished Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis argues, was not the first time a surprise attack shattered American assumptions about national security and reshaped American grand strategy. We've been there before, and have responded each time by dramatically expanding our security responsibilities. The pattern began in 1814, when the British attacked Washington, burning the White House and the Capitol. This early violation of homeland security gave rise to a strategy of unilateralism and preemption, best articulated by John Quincy Adams, aimed at maintaining strength beyond challenge throughout the North American continent. It remained in place for over a century. Only when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 did the inadequacies of this strategy become evident: as a consequence, the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt devised a new grand strategy of cooperation with allies on an intercontinental scale to defeat authoritarianism. That strategy defined the American approach throughout World War II and the Cold War. The terrorist attacks of 9/11, Gaddis writes, made it clear that this strategy was now insufficient to ensure American security. The Bush administration has, therefore, devised a new grand strategy whose foundations lie in the nineteenth-century tradition of unilateralism, preemption, and hegemony, projected this time on a global scale. How successful it will be in the face of twenty-first-century challenges is the question that confronts us. This provocative book, informed by the experiences of the past but focused on the present and the future, is one of the first attempts by a major scholar of grand strategy and international relations to provide an answer.

Did the Soviet Union want world revolution? Why did the USSR send missiles to Cuba? What made the Cold War last as long as it did? Drawing on new sources and scholarship, John Lewis Gaddis presents a comprehensive comparative history of the conflict from its origins, to its most dangerous moment, the Cuban Missile Crisis. A fresh, thought-provoking and powerfully argued reassessment of the Cold War by one of its most distinguished historians, We Know Now will set the agenda for debates on this subject for years to come.

When Strategies of Containment was first published, the Soviet Union was still a superpower, Ronald Reagan was president of the United States, and the Berlin Wall was still standing. This updated edition of Gaddis' classic carries the history of containment through the end of the Cold War. Beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt's postwar plans, Gaddis provides a thorough critical analysis of George F. Kennan's original strategy of containment, NSC-68, The Eisenhower-Dulles "New Look," the Kennedy-Johnson "flexible response" strategy, the Nixon-Kissenger strategy of detente, and now a comprehensive assessment of how Reagan- and Gorbechev- completed the process of containment, thereby bringing the Cold War to an end. He concludes, provocatively, that Reagan more effectively than any other Cold War president drew upon the strengths of both approaches while avoiding their weaknesses. A must-read for anyone interested in Cold War history, grand strategy, and the origins of the post-Cold War world.

This collection of eleven essays provides one of the first explanations of how and why the United States forty year struggle with the former Soviet Union has finally ended. The book contains significant new interpretations of the American style of diplomacy in the twentieth century; and the role of morality, nuclear weapons, and intelligence and espionage in Washington's conduct of the Cold War. It controversially reassesses the leadership of two distinctive cold war warriors, John Foster Dulles and Ronald Reagan, and employs new methodological techniques to account for the sudden and surprising events of 1989.

How have the United States and the Soviet Union managed to get through more than four decades of Cold War without actually going to war with each other? In this book John Gaddis uses recently released American and British documents to explore key issues in Cold War history that remain unresolved, suggesting answers to this and other vital questions about post-war diplomacy.

How has it happened that the United States and the Soviet Union have managed to get through more than four decades of Cold War confrontation without going to war with one another? Historian John Lewis Gaddis suggests answers to this and other vital questions about postwar diplomacy in his new book, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War.
Gaddis uses recently-declassified American and British documents to explore several key issues in Cold War history that remain unresolved: Precisely what was it about the Soviet Union's behavior after World War II that American leaders found so threatening? Did the United States really want a sphere of influence in postwar Europe? What led the Truman administration first to endorse, but then immediately to back away from, a strategy designed to avoid American military involvement on the mainland of Asia? Why did the United States not use nuclear weapons during the decade in which it had an effective monopoly over them? Did American leaders really believe in the existence of an international communist "monolith"? How did Russians and Americans fall into the habit of not shooting down each other's reconnaisance satellites?
Relating these questions to the current status of Soviet-American relations, Gaddis makes a strong case for the relative stability of the postwar international system, a stability whose components include--and go well beyond --nuclear deterrence. The result is a provocative exercise in contemporary history, certain to generate interest, discussion, and, in the end, important new insights on both past and present aspects of the age in which we live.