The Children’s Illustrated Clausewitz, Volume 1

As I dimly recall from early in the Kickstart campaign, author FitzGerald said something like “I am frankly a little alarmed by how many people are contacting me along the lines of ‘I teach at {Distinguished Military Staff College/Diplomacy Program}, and I’m looking forward to this book so I can assign readings that my students will actually do.’” Yikes!

As you might expect from the title, The Children’s Illustrated Clausewitz is an illustrated summary of On War. FitzGerald compresses the chapters down to a few pages while retaining their essence. Her thoughts on Clausewitz’s demarcation of law, theory, doctrine, and practice are worthwhile even for small pacifists. Learning to tolerate ambiguity and the contradictory constraints of the real world while still striving for general truths and excellence are key parts of growing up. And you don’t have to be continuing policy by “other means” to be reminded that divided efforts are frequently wasted efforts, and that the surest path to success is to identify the key center of gravity and commit everything to it.

Unfortunately, there are some choices which I don’t much care for. The book is structured as a lesson between Hare Clausewitz and his woodland friends, with their dialogue denoted in colored block letters. The woodland friends supposedly have distinct personalities and points of view, but that doesn’t come through. The artwork is also… not as good as I wanted. Children’s books don’t have a high bar for aesthetics, but the less said about the pictures, the better. Which is a shame, because Kyle Ferrin (artist on fuzzy-woodlands-creatures-in-brutal-asymmetric-warfare boardgame Root) could have done something incredible with the concept.

But hey, I backed the kickstarter and I enjoyed the book.