Some questions are of perennial importance, and yet it sometimes takes a singular event to carve their significance into stone. Take leadership, for example. Few things appear to be of greater moment than leadership as I write these words during the crisis of 2020. Or take the global perspective. If anyone doubted the need to study the world as an interconnected whole (though not necessarily a friendly whole), he can do so no longer. Finally, there is strategy. How to solve the crisis, how did we get there, and where do we go next are all strategic questions of the highest order.

The two books under review here explore profound issues about leadership, strategy, and the global perspective. Not that either book is about pandemics, panic, duplicitous tyrannies abroad, looming economic depression, or the possibility of social unrest at home. Their common purview is war. Fortunately, amid all our woes, war is not on offer, at least not yet. Yet war is close to our minds these days. Few could doubt that the disease behaves like an enemy on the attack. Many will have wondered whether the virus, a tiny microorganism only 125 nanometers in size, might be in the process of unleashing monstrous events that lead to an actual war and not just a metaphorical one. So, current affairs as well as a perennial interest in history both turn our attention to these two works.

Andrew Roberts begins his Leadership in War: Essential Lessons from