Abstract: Martin van Creveld, the eminent military historian, said of the original edition of this book, first published in 1987, that it '... is brilliant', and elsewhere described it first chapter as '... written in heaven.' More recently, Robert Leonhard, the American military analyst said that in Strategy 'Luttwak demonstrates his status as one of the greatest American military thinkers' and considers it 'A fine work that deepens the understanding of the dialectic nature of warfare and is absolutely foundational to my theory of combined-arms warfare.' Surely, having already been reviewed as glowingly as this, there is no need for a further edition or, indeed, review. Yet not so, for as Edward Luttwak says 'Once the original edition was consigned to the printers, I did not cease to study strategy and war, nor did I stop working professionally, in practical ways in the field and as an adviser. Whether from theory or practice, the original idea continued to evolve'. The core of Luttwak's understanding of war is what he describes as its 'paradoxical logic' where any action will become ultimately self-defeating. This understanding draws on Clausewitz's 'culminating point' but then extends it to be the central insight necessary to understand war. Luttwak considers that most practitioners of war come to grief because they never understand or hedge against this paradoxical logic, but continue to apply the linear logic, that is that more is better, which Luttwak considers applies in all situations other than the adversarial war or war-like setting.