Much of the book is devoted to the Middle East, Asia and America, but these are not places that attract his clearest thinking, or his best prose. But it is not easy to derive any general principles from his narrative. This confident display of knowledge is - the cover of the book promises - “the summation of Henry Kissinger’s thinking about history, strategy and statecraft”. It is at the very least an astonishing act of organisation and a reflection of the relentless discipline that has allowed Kissinger to perpetuate his reputation, four decades beyond the end of his time as Richard Nixon’s foreign policy tsar. He analyses ancient Indian political philosophers, medieval Chinese official memoranda and Isil (also known as Isis) in Iraq, without ever being tempted into digression, repetition, autobiography or factual errors. Henry Kissinger is 91, and has marked this by writing a book describing the foreign policy of most of the world. First published in The Times on 14 September 2014.
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