It’s very hard indeed to think of a single thinker or writer who looms as large over their chosen field of study as Carl von Clausewitz. Clausewitz, on the odd chance you haven’t heard of him in this age of wars and rumors of wars, was a Prussian scholar-general. His field of study was warfare—or more precisely, the theory and practice of war, and the vexed, chronically misunderstood relation between the two.
Clausewitz’s magnum opus was begun in 1816 after he’d survived the rigors of more than 30 combat engagements in the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars of Europe, more or less physically intact. The manuscript for On War was left unfinished at the time of his death from a cholera epidemic in 1831, and first published in German in three volumes a few years later by his wife, the former Countess Marie von Bruhl, who possessed a fine, discriminating intelligence, and a passionate devotion to her husband and his life’s work.
How Clausewitz Invented Modern War
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