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State of Doom: Bernard Brodie, the Bomb, and the Birth of the Bipolar World. By Barry Scott Zellen (Continuum, 2011). ISBN: 1441124624. NEW! This book examines Bernard Brodie's strategic and philosophical response to the nuclear age, embedding his work within the classical theories of Carl von Clausewitz. Zellen is a Researcher at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, USA, where he is Research Director of the Arctic Security Project. The managing editor of Culture and Conflict Review and Strategic Insights journals, he has published several books, including On Thin Ice: The Inuit, the State and the Challenge of Arctic Sovereignty (Lexington Books, 2009) and Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic (Praeger, 2009). |
On Waterloo: Clausewitz, Wellington, and the Campaign of 1815. Ed./trans. Christopher Bassford, Daniel Moran, and Gregory W. Pedlow (Clausewitz.com, 2010). ISBN: 1453701508. 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. This was Clausewitz's latest campaign study and its findings were never incorporated into On War. Thus most readers will find it new material. Search inside this book. |
Decoding Clausewitz: A New Approach to On War (University Press of Kansas, 2008). By Jon Tetsuro Sumida . ISBN (hardcover): 9780700616169; (paperback 0700618198) Sumida contends that Clausewitz's central value lies in his method of reenacting the psychological difficulties of high command in order to promote the powers of intuition that he believed were essential to effective strategic decision-making. Sumida also correctly notes Clausewitz's argument that the defense is a stronger form of war than the offense and goes on to argue that this is in fact his primary strategic proposition. This concept, Sumida maintains, must be understood in order to make sense of Clausewitz's positions on absolute and real war, guerrilla warfare, and the relationship of war and policy/politics. Here is the Preface and Table of Contents. Here is the preface to the (revised) paperback edition (2011). See Reviews. |
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Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe (Oxford University Press, September 2007). ISBN: 0199232024. This is the proceedings of the March 2005 Oxford University conference on Clausewitz in the 21st Century. This is a stellar, multidisciplinary collection of essays that defines the current state of the art in Clausewitz studies. Kindle edition. See discussion by Andreas Herberg-Rothe and Tony Echevarri; Review by James Woudhuysen in Spiked. |
Clausewitz's On War: A Biography (Books That Changed the World). By Hew Strachan (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006). ISBN: 0871139561. Strachan, one of the world’s foremost military historians, offers some answers to many of the problems posed by Clausewitz's writings. He explains how and why On War was written, elucidates what Clausewitz meant, offers insight into the impact it has had on conflict, and evaluates its continued significance in our world today. |
Clausewitz and Contemporary War. By Antulio J. Echevarria (Oxford University Press, 2007). ISBN: 0199231915. Tony Echevarria lays out Clausewitz's methodology and uses that as a basis for understanding his contributions. He addresses Clausewitz's theories concerning the nature of war, the relationship between war and politics, the major principles of strategy he examined, and their relationship to current debates over the nature of contemporary conflict. Kindle edition. |
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Clausewitz Reconsidered (Praeger, 2009). By H.P. Wilmott and Michael B. Barrett. ISBN: 0313362866. 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. They start with the dubious assumption that war today is far more endemic and brutal than when Clausewitz tried to explain it. This volume explores that alleged paradox and shows that if anything, we can anticipate further uncontrolled violence. The authors conclude that Clausewitz and On War have assumed a status akin to holy writ, but are obviously dated. The aim of Clausewitz Reconsidered is to bring the master's theories up to date, providing the current generation with a new basis for thought and analysis. |
Clausewitz's Puzzle: The Political Theory of War. By Andreas Herberg-Rothe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). ISBN: 0199202699. Herberg-Rothe argues that Clausewitz developed a wide-ranging political theory of war by reflecting on the success, the limitations, and the failure of Napoleon's method of waging war, a theory, which is still relevant in light of contemporary conflict. The book lays down the foundation of a general theory of war by concentrating on Clausewitz's historical analyses of war campaigns. See reviews
in English and German of the German
edition.
See the publication
announcement from OUP. See listings in Amazon.UK,
Oxford
University Press, |
On Wellington: A Critique of Waterloo (University of Oklahoma Press, 2010). By Carl von Clausewitz as translated by Peter Hofschröer. ISBN: 0806141085. This 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. Clausewitz, however, did not share this prejudice. Ironically, given its artificial focus on Wellington, and unlike On Waterloo (truth-in-advertising: a Clausewitz.com production), it contains only Clausewitz's campaign study, not Wellington's reply, Clausewitz's post-battle letters, or essays by other scholars. But buy both and let us know what you think. |
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Clausewitz and America: Strategic Thought and Practice from Vietnam to Iraq. By Stuart Kinross. (Routledge, 2008). ISBN: 041556963X. While many reviewers seem to regard Kinross's book as a long-overdue attack on Clausewitz, Kinross's actual views are a great deal more sophisticated than that view would imply. |
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In France, the
perception of Clausewitz, i.e., the way he was read, understood,
interpreted, criticised or ignored went through four distinct
phases. The chronological and thematic study of the books in which
he is quoted, studied or simply neglected shows that each of these
phases corresponds to a specific evolution in thinking about war
in France. |
Broché: 872 pages See our bibliography of works in French. |
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| Clausewitz for CEOs: Clausewitz on Strategy: Inspiration and Insight from a Master Strategist. Learn details. (Wiley, 2001) ISBN: 0471415138. Rejecting the commonplace but simplistic--indeed, fundamentally erroneous--notion that "business is war," The Boston Consulting Group's Strategy Institute nonetheless offers Clausewitz's framework for strategists' self-education as a way to train the business leader's thinking. Kindle edition. |
Rethinking the Nature of Modern War: Clausewitz and His Critics Revisited. Jan Angstrom and Isabelle Duyvesteyn , eds. (London: Frank Cass, 2004) ISBN: 0415354625. 0415354625. Details. Have globalization, ethnic conflict, and global insurgency fundamentally changed the nature of war? These essays scrutinize both Clausewitz's original arguments and those of his critics. Originally published in Stockholm by the Swedish National Defence College, 2003. Kindle edition. | The Book of War (The Modern Library, February 2000). Clausewitz and Sun Tzu in one book. The translation of Clausewitz's On War is the 1943 version done by German literary scholar O.J. Matthijs Jolles at the University of Chicago during World War II—not today's standard translation, but the most accurate. With an interesting introduction by contemporary military guru Ralph Peters. The version of Sun Tzu included is also excellent—this is the modern translation by Roger Ames, based on complete ancient texts found by archaeologists. ISBN: 0375754776. |
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| Clausewitz:
A Very Short Introduction. By Michael Howard (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2002). ISBN: 0192802577. Michael Howard
explains Clausewitz's ideas in terms both of his experiences as
a professional soldier in the Napoleonic Wars, and of the intellectual
background of his time. " [A] delightful introduction to the paradoxes
and insights of this passionate rationalist."--London Review
of Books Kindle edition. |
Clausewitz and Chaos: Friction in War and Military Policy. By Stephen J. Cimbala (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001). ISBN: 0275969517. Stephen Cimbala is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Penn State University. He argues that failure and folly are inevitable in war and in security policy related to war. Technology cannot rescue flawed policy or strategy. In his review of U.S. military strategy, Cimbala points to the possibility that excessive faith in technology may lead American strategy into a cul-de-sac. | After Clausewitz: German Military Thinkers before the Great War. By Antulio J. Echevarria II (University Press of Kansas, 2000). ISBN: 0700610715. The writings of Carl von Clausewitz loom so large in the annals of military theory that they obscure the substantial contributions of those German thinkers who came after him. Although none of those thinkers approached Clausewitzs stature, they were nonetheless theorists of considerable vision. It was a failure of application more than the theories themselves that were responsible for the ruinous slaughter of World War I. |
Jehuda L. Wallach, The Dogma of the Battle of Annihilation: The Theories of Clausewitz and Schlieffen and Their Impact on the German Conduct of Two World Wars (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986). ISBN: 0313244383. |
Stephen Bungay, The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps Between Plans, Actions and Results (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2011). ISBN-10: 1857885597 ISBN-13: 978-1857885590. A business treatment. Bungay, who enjoys real credibility both as a businessman (17 years with The Boston Consulting Group) and as a military historian (graduate work at Oxford and Tübingen) demonstrates a sophisticated grasp both of Clausewitz and Moltke's thinking and of how that thinking was reflected in practice by the German General Staff. Crucially, and unusually for writers who attempt to map the military domain to business, he genuinely understands that "business is not war." Kindle edition. | On War (Oxford World's Classics). ISBN: 0192807161 -- ISBN-13: 9780192807168. This 2007 abridgement from Oxford University Press, edited by Beatrice Heuser,is based on the current standard translation, the Princeton University Press edition by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (1976/84). [Here's a link to the Oxford University Press listing .] Kindle edition. |
| Clausewitz and African War: Politics and Strategy in Liberia and Somalia, by Isabelle Duyvesteyn. London: Frank Cass, 2005. ISBN 0714657247. Duyvesteyn concludes that such wars, despite the preconceptions of the "new wars" scholars, do in fact have overriding political rationales, which "revalidates Carl von Clausewitz's nineteenth-century understanding of war." | Reimagining War in the 21st Century: From Clausewitz to Network-Centric Warfare, by Manabrata Guha [Assistant Professor (ISSSP) at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India]. Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2010; series Critical Security Studies. ISBN 9780415561662. From the book announcement: "This book interrogates the philosophical backdrop of Clausewitzian notions of war, and asks whether modern, network-centric militaries can still be said to serve the 'political.' In light of the emerging theories and doctrines of Network-Centric War (NCW), this book traces the philosophical backdrop against which the more common theorizations of war and its conduct take place. Tracing the historical and philosophical roots of modern war from the 17th Century through to the present day, this book reveals that far from paralyzing the project of re-problematisating war, the emergence of NCW affords us an opportunity to rethink war in new and philosophically challenging ways." |
On Clausewitz: A Study of Military and Political Ideas, by Hugh Smith. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 272 pages. ISBN: 1403935874. Reviewed by Barry W. Watts , Joint Forces Quarterly, issue 42, 3rd quarter 2006; Ian Garrick Mason , TLS, April 1, 2005 |
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William H. McNeil, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force and Society Since A.D. 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). A comprehensive analysis of the development of military power over the past thousand years by a famed world historian. ISBN: 0226561585 |
Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species (Basic Books, 2002). Purely a book on biology, this approach to the sources of evolutionary--and thus strategic--innovation should affect your understanding of strategy in the human domain. ISBN 0465043925 (Paperback.). See Hardcover. |
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (W.W. Norton: 1999). Geographer Diamond asks why the civilizations of Eurasia, esp. the West, have such complex material civilizations, providing a rich, multi-factor analysis--a valuable contrast to V.D. Hanson's interesting work on the cultural origins of Western military superiority. ISBN: 0393317552 |
Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed (Viking, 2005). While Guns, Germs, and Steel explained the geographic and environmental reasons why some human populations have flourished, Collapse uses the same factors to examine why ancient societies, including the Anasazi of the American Southwest and the Viking colonies of Greenland, as well as modern ones such as Rwanda, have fallen apart. ISBN: 0670033375. |
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Gary A. Klein, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions (MIT Press, 1997). Klein, a cognitive psychologist, spent a decade watching fire-fighters, critical care nurses, pilots, nuclear power plant operators, battle planners, chess masters, and others making split-second decisions on the job, acting under such real-life constraints as time pressure, high stakes, personal responsibility, and shifting conditions. This book is a clear and engaging account of his findings, and it offers historians and military theorists a more realistic model for understanding the behavior of military and political decisionmakers than many have followed in the past. ISBN: 0262611465 |
John A. Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture (Westview, 2003). Lynn is an expert on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century warfare, esp. French, but here he has written a sweeping look at the cultural aspects of warfare in contexts ranging from classical Greece and India to medieval and modern Europe, Japan, and Egypt. More important, he has done so without succumbing to the "war & culture" crowd's tendency towards single-factor analysis, and his discussion of Clausewitz--despite some over-reliance on Azar Gat--is sensible and insightful. ISBN: 0813333725 |
Mitchell M. Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science At The Edge Of Order And Chaos (Simon & Schuster, 1992). Waldrop tells us the historical development of the birthing ground of Complexity science, the Santa Fe Institute. However, his main subject is complexity science itself and its implications. As one reviewer puts it, "He not only tells you what Complexity IS, but WHY you should care about it." As with James Gleick's Chaos, this is must reading for any 21st-century Clausewitzian wannabe. (See Alan D. Beyerchen's essay on the connection.) ISBN: 0671872346 |
James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Viking, 1987). In this now-classic work, Gleick, formerly a science writer for the New York Times, depicts the beginnings of Chaos theory, which draws on the seemingly random patterns that characterize many natural phenomena. It explains the thought processes and investigative techniques of Chaos scientists, illustrating concepts like Julia sets, Lorenz attractors, and the Mandelbrot Set with sketches, photographs, and wonderful descriptive prose. Must reading for any Clausewitzian. (See Alan D. Beyerchen's essay on the connection.) ISBN: 0140092501 |
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Victor Davis Hanson, Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power (Doubleday: 2001). This is a seriously flawed but also very interesting study of the character of Western warfare. The author is a classicist and contemporary political polemicist. ISBN: 0385720386 |
Robert Drews, The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. (Princeton University Press, 1993). A fascinating exploration of a major military mystery by (Johns Hopkins, 1960). ISBN: 0691025916 |
Lawrence Keeley, War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Simply one of the best books we've read in years. Unlike the faux-anthropological nonsense published in recent years by academic historians, it gives us a genuine look at the anthropology of war--the author is an actual anthropologist and archaeologist. Looking at warfare among pre-state, pre-literate peoples from the stone age to the present day, Keeley convincingly demonstrates that prehistoric warfare was more deadly, more frequent, and more ruthless than modern war. ISBN: 0195119126. |
John
Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map
the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). |
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The "Trinity" is a key concept in Clausewitzian theory, which Clausewitz illustrated by referring to this scientific device. You can obtain the ROMP (Randomly Oscillating Magnetic Pendulum) from science toy stores for about $15. From Amazon.com. |
OTHER BOOKS BY AND ABOUT CLAUSEWITZ
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Azar Gat, The Development of Military Thought - The Nineteenth Century (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1992). This is a useful and important book, though Gat is an uncommonly pompous academic and tends to take his own insights a little too seriously. ISBN: 0198202466. |
Azar Gat, The Origins of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 2001). Gat continues both to have some good ideas and to take all of his own ideas rather more seriously than the evidence (or the nature of reality) can support. ISBN: 0199247625. |
Clausewitz and the State:
The Man, His Theories, and His Times, by Peter Paret (Princeton,
1976). ISBN: 069100806X. |
| Philosophers of Peace and War: Kant, Clausewitz, Marx, Engels and Tolstoy, by W. B. Gallie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). ISBN 052129651X; 978-0521296519. From the book announcement: Intellectual eminence apart, what did Kant, Clausewitz, Marx and Engels, and Tolstoy have in common? Professor Gallic argues that they made contributions to 'international theory' - to the understanding of the character and causes of war and of the possibility of peace between nations - which were of unrivalled originality in their own times and remain of undiminished importance in ours. But these contributions have been either ignored or much misunderstood ; chiefly because, as with all intellectual efforts in unexplored fields, they were often imperfectly expressed, and were also overshadowed by their author's more striking achievements. Professor Gallic has sorted out, compared and contrasted, criticised and re-phrased the teachings of his chosen authors on peace and war. | ||
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Modern Strategy, by Colin Gray
(Oxford, 1999). Hardcover
ISBN:
0198280300. Softcover ISBN:
0198782519. Gray is considered by many to be the foremost
Clausewitzian writer on strategic affairs today.
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Reading Clausewitz. By Beatrice Heuser. Paperback - 320 pages (Pimlico, 2002) ISBN: 071266484X. This is a comprehensive study on how to read Clausewitz and how others have read him—from the military commanders in World War One through Lenin and Mao Zedung to strategists in the nuclear age. Designed for Staff College students. See review. | Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought, by Michael Handel (Cass, 3rd ed, 2001). ISBN: 0714681326. Handel's work compares the thoughts of Sun Tzu, Jomini, and Clausewitz. |
| Clausewitz: A Biography. By Roger Parkinson (New York: Stein and Day, 1971). Reissued 2002. This book is poorly regarded by many, but it does have some strengths in covering Clausewitz's personal life and experiences. Softcover ISBN: 0815412339. | The Cognitive Character of War: Prussia, 1806. By Peter Paret (Princeton University Press, 2009). ISBN 0691135819. This book traces Napoleon's victory over Prussia in 1806 and Prussia's effort to recover from defeat to show how in one particular historical episode operational analyses together with institutional and political decisions eventually turned defeat to victory. In the concluding chapter, Paret addresses the impact of 1806 on two men who fought on opposing sides in the campaign and sought a new theoretical understanding of war—Henri Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz. Reviewed by Jennie Kiesling [USMA]. | War, Politics, and Power. Selections from On War, and "I Believe and Profess." By Carl von Clausewitz, translated and edited by Edward M. Collins (COL, USAF) (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1962). Softcover, 209pp. ISBN: 0895264013. |
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Carl Von Clausewitz, On War
(8 Cassettes), (probably 1873 Graham
edition), Read by Nadia May. Format: Audiotape.
Pub. Date: December 1990. Edition
Description "Unabridged." That's Doubtful. ISBN: 0786101946.
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Carl von Clausewitz, The Campaign
of 1812 in Russia. Trans. anonymous [Francis Egerton, Lord Ellesmere].
London: J. Murray, 1843. Foreword by Gerard Chaliand. This reprint
publication 1997. Softcover, 148pp. ISBN: 0962871583. Another version of this text is available free on-line.
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Carl von Clausewitz, The Campaign
of 1812 in Russia. Trans. anonymous [Francis Egerton, Lord
Ellesmere]. London: J. Murray, 1843. Hardcover, 260pp. Publisher:
Stackpole Books. This reprint publication 1992.
ISBN: 1853671142. Another version of this text is available free on-line.
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Michael Howard. Clausewitz.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Textbook
Paperback, 79th ed., 79pp. ISBN: 0192876074.
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Cimbala, Stephen. Clausewitz
and Escalation: Classical Perspectives on Nuclear Strategy.
London: Frank Cass, 1991. Hardcover,
218pp. ISBN: 0714634204.
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Carl von Clausewitz, Principles
of War. This apears to be a reprint of the 1942 Hans
Gatzke translation. Dover Books. ISBN: 0486427994.
This text is free on-line HERE.
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| Handel, Michael I., ed. Clausewitz and Modern Strategy. London: Frank Cass, 1986. Hardcover, 324pp. ISBN: 0714632945. Softcover 0714640530. | The Essential Clausewitz: Selections from On War, by Carl von Clausewitz, edited by Joseph I. Greene. This is a Dover reprint of the version published by Cassell and Company, London, 1945. |
NOT
Recommended. Here's
why.
Carl von Clausewitz. On War. Edited and abridged by Anatol Rapoport. Paperback, 461pp. Publisher: Viking Penguin, 1968; based on the 1873 Graham translation; includes elements of 1908 F.N. Maude edition). ISBN: 0140444270. |
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See Bibliographies of relevant works in English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish/Portuguese, and other languages E-book versions of On War (apparently only Books I-IV, of eight). (Full 8-book text on-line HERE) Another E-Book version of On War (MicroSoft Reader format) Item# B0000523UU  Actually, this one seems to have disappeared. But we like the graphic, so we're retaining it for display. |
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