The Strategist: The Life and Times of Thomas Schelling: How a Game Theorist Understood the Cold War and Won the Nobel Prize in Economics

by Robert Dodge

It is strange that a book could carry endorsement from both Robert McNamara and Daniel Ellsberg, perhaps even more so when a prime minister is added to the mix. What could bring such a combination together is a man with a ready smile and a twinkle in his eye who had lived a life unknown to the general public until his profound yet quiet influence was recognized as he was awarded a Nobel Prize for Economics in 2005. Thomas C. Schelling had liked solving puzzles from his early days and that joy of solving puzzles would lead him to study economics, as the Great Depression had offered the most difficult of all puzzles, then to nuclear strategy when the puzzle became survival in the Cold War. This is his story.

260 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2006

Reviews

[Dad · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating subject gets a biography that's not quite up to it. Tom Schelling has given so much analytic guidance to anyone interested in strategic thinking and its application to real world situations, ranging from sports to global warming, individual behavior to national defense, markets that work and markets that fail, that I wish this biography went a little more into the genesis of these powerful unifying analytic tools and spent less time telling us banal background history of the past 60 years. (We know Elvis was popular in the late '50's.)
Still, worthwhile reading for any student of conflict, coalition and strategy.