In “Leadership in War: Essential Lessons from Those Who Made History,” historian Andrew Roberts offers a series of concise essays profiling various leaders whose successes or failures in war demonstrate qualities of leadership to follow and ones to discard respectively.

The concise insights and brevity of narrative here are breathtaking and surprising given Roberts’ better known works such as massive bestselling biographies on Napoleon Bonaparte and Winston Churchill (who are both included in this much slimmer volume).

In addition to Churchill and Napoleon, Roberts profiles Horatio Nelson, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, George C. Marshall, Charles de Gaulle, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Margaret Thatcher. 

He concludes with a look at “the leadership paradigm” which compares personality traits and achievements and failures of these individuals along with other people from history that one could argue should be included in his list of profiles.

Granted, the majority of people profiled are either European or American, mostly men, and most from the past century, though he does mention military leaders from other eras and locales in the conclusion.

Still, with his astute eye for detail and storytelling, Roberts has penned a fascinating book with profiles that adhere to the grim Churchill adage of “the story of the human race is war.”