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In Strategy: A History, Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the world's leading specialists on conflict and international politics, catches the vast history of tactical thinking, in a consistently participating and insightful consideration of how strategy came up to pervade every part of your lives. The range of Freedman's narrative is astonishing, moving from the surprisingly advanced strategy applied in primate teams, to the opposing strategies of Achilles and Odysseus in The Iliad, the tactical advice of Sunshine Tzu and Machiavelli, the fantastic military enhancements of Baron Henri de Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz, the grounding of revolutionary strategy in class problems by Marx, the insights into corporate and business strategy within Peter Drucker and Alfred Sloan, and the efforts of the main social scientists focusing on strategy today. The central issue in the centre of strategy, the author notes, is whether it is possible to manipulate and shape our environment rather than simply become the victim of pushes beyond one's control. Over and over, Freedman shows that the natural unpredictability of the environment - at the mercy of chance occurrences, the work of competitors, the missteps of friends - provides strategy with its challenge and its theatre. Armies or businesses or nations seldom move in one predictable state of affairs to another, but instead feel their way through a series of expresses, each one not quite what was anticipated, demanding a reappraisal of the initial strategy, including its ultimate goal. Thus the picture of strategy that emerges in this book is the one that is fluid and flexible, governed by the starting point, not the finish point. A brilliant summary of the most visible strategic theories ever sold, from David's use of deception against Goliath, to the present day use of game theory in economics, this masterful volume level sums up a lifetime of representation on strategy.
