Review

Add This to the Canon of Great Diplomacy Books

A. Wess Mitchell’s tour through two millennia of diplomacy is catnip for foreign-policy wonks. October 31, 2025, 3:00 PM Comment icon View Comments ( )

The book Great Power Diplomacy by A. Wess Mitchell atop a stack of books behind a black paper tear.

Any book that starts with a speech by Archidamus and the Peloponnesian War is catnip to a certain type of reader. And A. Wess Mitchell’s Great Power Diplomacy , though it competes in a crowded field, does exactly what it sets out to do: Explain how and why diplomacy has mattered over the last millennium or two—and why it really matters today.

There is a grand tradition of books on diplomacy, some of which I dust but seldom. Obviously Henry Kissinger’s Diplomacy is

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