On War Final Book Blog

This book is all about the theory and conceptual views of war. Clausewitz is a philosopher/general for the Prussian army. He talks a lot about how Napoleon Bonaparte was a great leader, even thought Clausewitz fought against Bonaparte. The language in the book was difficult at times and I found myself having to reread some of the paragraphs, because it was translated from German to English. Aside from that the book is by far my favorite philosopical war book. His ideas are clearly stated and even steps outside the actual fighting and looks at how war is to be viewed or "criticized."

I found myself constantly highlighting passages. The ideas are "simple," but "they are not easy"(Clausewitz 243). The book is long and has a lot of run on sentences, which did influence me when I was writing my Iliad essay, and is difficult to read at times.

"But the frequent application of methods will be seen to be most essential in and unavoidable in the conduct of war..." (Clausewitz 207) This whole passage is one sentence (broken up by semi-colons and comas) and a paragraph which happens to take up 90% of the page.

I would classify this book as a "how to" on just about every aspect of war. The content is extremely dense and will probably make more sense to me when I am older, but I could comprehend all of the ideas pretty well. Some were self-explanatory and others I needed to have broken down and detailed examples, which Clausewitz does. The theory of war was the most confusing at first, because the abstract ideas were over my head. So I had to ponder these ideas and then it was a renaissance for me. All of these ideas made sense and I could even talk to a Lieutenant in the Rangers about these ideas in war.

The rest of the book gets into actual events and devices in war. Strategy, method, tactics, Bonaparte, and a handful more that I cannot list. If one were to read this book, I would suggest a knowledge of the Rhine campaigns and many of the wars and people around the time of Bonaparte. (Fredrick the Great, etc.) I had to learn while reading and do research for myself to understand. This is my new favorite book, and I feel like I could read it again now that I have basically highlighted the whole book and grasp a better view on modern warfare.

This is the book that all current generals (U.S., French, Russian, British, etc.) study.