About the Author

Donald Kagan is one of America's most eminent historians. He is the Hillhouse Professor of History and Classics at Yale University and the author or coauthor of many books including The Western Heritage, On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace, and a four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War.

Frederick W. Kagan is an assistant professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the author of The Military Reforms of Nicholas I.

Reviews

"A riveting piece of diplomatic history with lessons for the present." --Jacob Heilbrunn, The Wall Street Journal "In Donald Kagan's superb works on ancient and later history we find that rare combination--brilliant scholarship and sturdy common sense--qualities that, with Frederick Kagan, he here deploys in a thorough analysis of the failures and misunderstandings that nearly ruined Britain before World War II and, even more strikingly, of the ay in which they are being dangerously replicated in American policy today." --Robert Conquest, author of Reflections on a Ravaged Century "This book should be read carefully by policy makers in the new administration and Congress." --Gary Anderson, The Washington Times "Theirs is a polemic that manages, through meticulous detail, careful qualification, and absence of exaggeration, to avoid twisting the historical record." --Lawrence F. Kaplan, The Weekly Standard "A frightening story . . . Readers will be impressed by the force of their argument and the power of their reasoning." --Publishers Weekly "The challenge to some of the basic assumptions about our role in the post-cold-war world deserves serious consideration." --Booklist "A convincing case for the concerns over the real costs of a downsizing military." --Kirkus Reviews