Diplomacy

Kissinger's survey of statecraft runs from Richelieu and the Peace of Westphalia through the Congress of Vienna, Bismarck, the two world wars and the Cold War. Its recurring theme is the tension between realism, the balance of power and national interest, and the idealism that Woodrow Wilson brought into American foreign policy.

The book is long, opinionated and written by a practitioner who had a stake in the arguments, which is both its value and its limitation. His portraits of statesmen such as Metternich, Bismarck and Theodore Roosevelt are sharp, and the chapters on how alliances form and break remain useful for thinking about any multipolar order, including the one taking shape now.