There is a grand tradition of books on diplomacy, some of which I dust but seldom. Obviously Henry Kissinger’s Diplomacy is up there. So, too, is Robert Zoellick’s history of U.S. diplomacy. George Herring did a nice two-volume history of U.S. diplomacy that is textbook in its tidiness. Other practitioners, and legends of diplomacy, have also taken up the pen: We have Prince Talleyrand’s belated memoirs (he served four kings, one emperor, and a revolution) and his scurrilous letters. Klemens von Metternich’s memoirs , not to be confused with Kissinger’s thesis, are good. Gustav Stresemann’s papers have been collected, too, lasting longer and with more credit than the Weimar Republic ever did.

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.

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.