This book ... admirably fulfills its stated purpose. It compresses Mahans ideas into a manageable form, while simultaneously correlating those ideas with the climate of opinion in which they took shape and estimating their influence upon the course of events.
In 1982, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sponsored the first JCS Strategy Essay Competition, challenging students at our Senior Service Schools to write innovatively about issues of national security.
In 1946 Joseph Stalin was arguling in favour of the Volga-Don canal on the grounds that it would enable the Black Sea Fleet to fall back to cover Stalingrad in the event of renewed hostilities.