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IMPORTANT RECENT WORKS — FUNDAMENTAL WORKS BY/ABOUT CLAUSEWITZ — PROBLEMATIC BOOKS — MORE
If you are looking for older books in any language, collectibles, first editions, etc., try Marelibri.com, formed in 2007 by five independent European book listing services and marketplaces. Marelibri has since expanded to encompass independent book sites worldwide, growing its remarkable collection of rare and antiquarian books to over 80 million books.
Vanya Eftimova Bellinger, Marie von Clausewitz: The Woman Behind the Making of On War (Oxford University Press, 2015), ISBN: 0190225432.
With the research skills both of a journalist and of a serious scholar, Bellinger has done a spectacular job of tracking down sources where no one else had thought to look, in the process recovering some materials thought lost in World War II and others that were previously unknown. This is an important work in the field. Without the efforts of Countess Marie von Clausewitz, Carl von Clausewitz's crucial work on military theory and strategy—On War—would never have been published.
But as historian and Clausewitz scholar Vanya Eftimova Bellinger establishes in this ground-breaking biography of the "other" Clausewitz, Marie was far more than merely a supportive wife who facilitated her husband's legacy. Marie's 1810 marriage to Clausewitz did not make sense to many observers (least of all her mother). She was a wealthy, cultured, and politically engaged young woman from a famous family, one of the highest-ranking non-royals in Prussia. He was a junior Prussian army officer with no family or political connections. But the bond between Marie and Carl was forged by love, a deep sense of trust, and a meeting of minds over common political and intellectual interests. Newly discovered archival materials reveal the extent of Marie's influence on her husband, beginning with the very early days of the courtship and lasting until his premature death. The two came to a "collaborative opinion" on many topics, from the moral implications of war to the emotional constitution of true leadership. This biography sheds enormous light on two extraordinary lives and minds, offering the first comprehensive and compelling look at the woman behind the composition of On War. In the process, it gives us a much richer view of her husband's personal evolution and thus of the deeper meaning behind many of his concepts.
NEW! NAPOLEON: ON WAR (Oxford University Press, 2015). By Bruno Colson. 560pp. ISBNs: 0199685568, 978-0199685561.
In exile on Saint-Helena, Napoleon mused about a great treatise on the art of war, but changed his mind and ordered the destruction of his notes. Thus was lost what would have been one of the most interesting and important books on the art of war ever written. The well known military historian Bruno Colson spent years researching Napoleon's correspondence and other writings, including especially the copy-book of General Bertrand, the Emperor's most trusted companion on Saint-Helena. His ground-breaking work has been carefully organized to follow the framework of Carl von Clausewitz's classic On War, allowing a fascinating comparison between Napoleon's ideas and those of his great Prussian adversary and interpreter and highlighting the intriguing similarities between these two founders of modern strategic thought. Regardez l'edition Française.
Also in French: Benoît Durieux, Clausewitz en France: Deux siècles de réflexion sur la guerre, 1807-2007 (Economica 2008), ISBN: 2717855777.
NEW! Empire of Chance: The Napoleonic Wars and the Disorder of Things (Harvard University Press, 2015). By Anders Engberg-Pedersen. 336pp. ISBNs: 067496764X, 978-0674967649.
Napoleon’s campaigns were the most complex military undertakings in history to that point. But they changed more than the nature of warfare. Concepts of chance, contingency, and probability became permanent fixtures in the West’s understanding of how the world works. Empire of Chance examines anew the place of war in the history of Western thought, showing how the Napoleonic Wars inspired a new discourse on knowledge. The theory of war espoused in Carl von Clausewitz’s classic treatise responded to contemporary developments in mathematics and philosophy, and the tools for solving military problems—maps, games, and simulations—became models for how to manage chance. On the other hand, the realist novels of Balzac, Stendhal, and Tolstoy questioned whether chance and contingency could ever be described or controlled. After Napoleon the state of war no longer appeared exceptional but normative, a prism that revealed the underlying operative logic determining the way society is ordered and unfolds.
NEW! CLAUSEWITZ: HIS LIFE AND WORK (Oxford University Press, 2015). By Donald Stoker. 376pp. ISBN: 0199357943.
A new biography that focuses on Clausewitz the professional combat soldier, this book capably places the man into the military history of the Napoleonic Wars. Many treatments of Clausewitz sneer at his "failure" to achieve high military command and forget that he was a young man—a mere major in 1812, a full colonel by 1815, but just 35 when Napoleon left the stage and peace broke out. An obscure junior officer from the boondocks, Clausewitz won the esteem and affection of Prussia's key military leaders (e.g., Scharnhorst and Gneisenau), became the military tutor to Hohenzollern princes, and married one of the highest-ranking non-royals in Prussia (a well-educated and talented partner whom he was smart enough to learn from). Temporarily an exile in the Russian army, he played an unbelievably nervy role in forcing the King of Prussia to switch sides and join the final coalitions against France. This irritated the King immensely—but not enough to prevent him from promoting Clausewitz to general in 1818. Contrary to the nonsense spouted by pop historians like John Keegan, Clausewitz was not "sort of pensioned off, sent to the staff college to live out his days." Still a young general at 50, he had already returned to active service before the crisis of 1830 forced Prussia to place a field army on the Russo/Polish border. And the chief-of-staff of that army was Clausewitz. Stoker himself seems a bit shocked to discover that Clausewitz had ambitions and career frustrations (as if academia itself were not a famous snake-pit of self-promoters...) and may be reading too much into Marie's bitter and grief-stricken complaints. But he certainly establishes Clausewitz's bona fides as a practical fighting man.
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NEW!
Christopher Daase and James W. Davis, editors,
Clausewitz on Small War
Oxford University Press, 2015. Available now from OUP.
216 pages, ISBNs 0198737130, 978-0198737131
The editors have assembled and translated Clausewitz's most important texts devoted to the analysis of asymmetric, unconventional, guerrilla, and small-unit warfare, including Clausewitz's lectures on small war given at the Prussian War Academy in 1810 and 1811. These demonstrate that asymmetric warfare is not an historical development that can be termed pre- or post-Clausewitzian, as many contemporary scholars of war and military strategy ahistorically assert. (That assertion would have been quite a surprise to Engels, Mao, or Giap.) Rather, Clausewitz himself emerges as an early theorist of insurgency and asymmetric warfare with insights that are relevant today.
CONTENTS:
1. Introduction
2. Lectures on Small War at the Prussian War College in 1810 and 1811
3. Testimonial (Bekenntnisdenkschrift)
4. On the Political Advantages and Disadvantages of the Prussian Institution of the Landwehr
5. The Arming of the People (Volksbewaffnung)
Carl von Clausewitz and Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, On Waterloo: Clausewitz, Wellington, and the Campaign of 1815
Ed./trans. Christopher Bassford, Daniel Moran, and Gregory W. Pedlow.
Published 2010 by Clausewitz.com. Bicentennial edition 2015.
ISBN-10: 1453701508
ISBN-13: 9781453701508
Paperback, 318pp.
List price: $18.00.
Kindle edition US
Barnes & Noble Nook version
Kindle edition UK
This book is built around a new and complete translation of Clausewitz's study of the Waterloo campaign (Berlin: 1835), which is a strategic analysis of the entire campaign (not just the Battle of Waterloo), and the Duke of Wellington's detailed 1842 response to it. It contains Wellington's initial battle report; two of Clausewitz's post-battle letters to his wife Marie; correspondence within Wellington's circle concerning Clausewitz's work; Clausewitz's campaign study; Wellington's memorandum in response; and enlightening essays by the editors. See reviews in The Journal of Military History and War in History.
NEW!
CLAUSEWITZ
The State and War
Edited by Andreas Herberg-Rothe,
Jan Willem Honig, and Daniel Moran
Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2011
ISBN 978-3-515-09912-7
NEW!
Clausewitz Goes Global
Carl von Clausewitz in the 21st Century
Edited by Andreas Herberg-Rothe,
Jan Willem Honig, and Daniel Moran
Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2011
ISBN 978-3-515-09912-7
Ebook 978-3-937885-54
NOTE: The book listings below should show the Amazon catalog listing images, as in the thumbnail image below. If you aren't seeing the Amazon images, check your device's security software settings, which may be blocking the ads.
See reviews in English and German of the German edition. See the publication announcement from OUP. See listings in Amazon.UK, Oxford University Press and in Oxford Scholarship OnLine, and this discussion on Sonshi.com.
FUNDAMENTAL WORKS BY AND ABOUT CLAUSEWITZ
Do you know which translation of ON WAR you have? Or which one you should get?
Note: There are three major English translations of Clausewitz's On War (and several obscure ones). Most electronic versions are copies of the old 1873 Graham translation (because it is out of copyright), but unless you are obsessed with the viewpoint of Victorian-era Britons, it is not the version you want. Also, check the ISBNs for the book you're ordering: Amazon often gets the various editions confused.
"[A] startlingly worthwhile book.... Bassford tells a great story of dutiful struggle and pigheadedness, of petty revenge and epiphany, and, ultimately, of how Anglophone armies that read Clausewitz reluctantly beat the hell out of a German-speaking military that willfully read him wrong." (Ralph Peters)
HANS DELBRÜCK: CLAUSEWITZ DISCIPLE AND
FOUNDER OF MODERN MILITARY HISTORY
ABOVE: Hans Delbrück (1848-1929), History of the Art of War within the Framework of Political History, 4 vols., trans. [Brigadier General, USA] Walter J. Renfroe, Jr. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975-85); to right, below: Arden Bucholz, ed., Delbrück's Modern Military History (University of Nebraska Press, 1997).
The German military historian Hans Delbrück wrote: "In a report that [Clausewitz] wrote on 10 July 1827 and that is placed at the head of the work he left behind, Vom Kriege, he considers redoing this work once more from the viewpoint that there is a double art of war, that is, the one 'in which the purpose is the overthrow of the enemy,' and the one 'in which one only intends to make a few conquests on the borders of the country.' The 'completely different nature' of these two efforts must always be separated from one another. Clausewitz died in 1831, before he could carry out this work. To fill out the lacuna that he left has been one of the purposes of the present work." (Delbrück, vol.4, p.454.)
Delbrück is not widely read in English, but John Keegan acknowledged him as "the father of modern 'scientific' military history." Unfortunately for the Clausewitzaphobic Keegan, Delbrück himself was an ardent Clausewitzian. No problem—there's no reason to think that Keegan could have recognized the nature or the source of the theories Delbrück spent so much time explaining.
PROBLEMATIC BOOKS
Stephen L. Melton, The Clausewitz Delusion: How the American Army Screwed Up the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (A Way Forward) (Zenith Press, 2009), ISBN-10: 0760337136. It's hard to argue with Melton's basic argument, i.e., that the US Army screwed up the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether this should be blamed on the Army in particular, on DOD broadly, on a dysfunctional administration, on a system of government specifically designed by its founders to be bad at imperial adventures, or on an increasingly feckless ruling class is clearly open to debate. But Melton seems to know little about Clausewitz and is simply using the name to describe an unrealistic approach to warfare rooted in an unrealistic understanding of political and military history. For that, Clausewitz bears no responsibility, and the Army's "Clausewitz Delusion" is actually a delusion about Clausewitz rooted in that larger political and historical blindness. So this may be a good book on the Army or the "American way of war," but it has little to do with the actual Clausewitz or his ideas.
Clausewitz Reconsidered (Praeger, 2009). By H.P. Wilmott and Michael B. Barrett. ISBN: 0313362866. This book would have been a lot better had Wilmot spent some time actually reading Clausewitz before buying wholesale into the fantasies of the "New Wars" scholars. The authors assess Clausewitz's theories, examining their viability at a time when asymmetric warfare and "war" conducted by and against nonstate actors is increasingly common and state control often ephemeral. The basis of the book's analysis is an examination of war over the last four centuries, since the Thirty Years' War, including the Cold War and subsequent conflicts. The authors start with the dubious assumption that war today is far more endemic and brutal than when Clausewitz tried to explain it—a surprisingly Eurocentric argument that reflects professional military historians' fixation on open-field warfare by uniformed armies, not historical reality. [As to the endemic quality of warfare over the ages, see also Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (Viking Adult, 2011), ISBN-10 0670022950.] This volume explores the alleged paradox Wilmot describes and argues that, if anything, we can anticipate further uncontrolled violence—which may indeed be true, despite the ahistoricism of Wilmot's and Barrett's analysis. The authors conclude that Clausewitz and On War have assumed a status akin to holy writ, but are dated (which should come as no surprise with an 1832 book). Their aim in Clausewitz Reconsidered is to bring "the master's" theories up to date, providing the current generation with a new basis for thought and analysis. That's a worthwhile ambition that clearly requires more work than this effort shows.
NOT Recommended. Here's
why.
Carl von Clausewitz. On War. Edited and abridged
by biologist and accomplished amateur musician Anatol Rapoport. Paperback, 461pp. Publisher:
Viking Penguin, 1968; based on the 1873 Graham translation; includes
elements of the 1908 F.N. Maude edition). ISBN:
0140444270. This deep abridgement of On War, done during the late 1960s by a non-expert whose primary motivation was to attack Henry S. Kissinger, is remarkably misleading. It was evidently the only version of On War ever examined by historian John Keegan, who apparently never made it past Rapoport's long, hostile (to Kissinger, not Clausewitz) introduction.
On Wellington: A Critique of Waterloo (University of Oklahoma Press, 2010). By Carl von Clausewitz as translated by Peter Hofschröer. ISBN: 0806141085. WARNING: This is a negative review of a book that is a direct competitor of a Clausewitz.com product, so apply your own judgement to its critique. This book is a translation of Clausewitz's Der Feldzug von 1815 in Frankreich (Berlin, 1835). The translator uses Clausewitz's campaign study (which focuses equally on all of the top commanders of the campaign) to continue his personal vendetta against Wellington. Unfortunately, Clausewitz did not share Hofschröer's blatant prejudices and his book is no more a critique of Wellington than it is of Napoleon and Blücher. Ironically, given its artificial focus on Wellington, and unlike On Waterloo, it contains only Clausewitz's campaign study (in a very competent translation). It includes neither Wellington's original after-action report nor his reply to Clausewitz, Clausewitz's post-battle letters, nor essays by other scholars. But feel free to buy both books and let us know what you think. See reviews of both books in The Journal of Military History and War in History.
MORE BOOKS BY OR ABOUT CLAUSEWITZ
These books are listed on an additional page. Books listed on this page include older or more specialized items, but many are nonetheless important and useful. See also our French, German, and US Bookstores and our Bibliographies in several languages.