Information and Communications Technology.HR, Training and Organisational Development.Health - Medical and Nursing Management.Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance.Yet this is no dry work of obscure scholarship – it is written in the spirit of the quotation from Shakespeare’s Tempest inscribed on the National Archives Building in Washington, DC: “What’s past is prologue.” As the author himself describes it, the book is “best understood as a present-minded essay on foreign affairs and statecraft”.

Realpolitik: a History exemplifies the benefits that can be gained by careful and methodical study of history as a means to a better understanding of contemporary challenges.īy examining the origins, uses and misuses of the concept of realpolitik over the past century and a half, John Bew, reader in history and foreign policy at King’s College London and a contributing writer for this magazine, reveals a notion that is more often discussed than defined, and offers the reader a lens through which to view many of the most acute problems currently confronting policymakers in the West.īew’s extensive research ranges across the UK and US national archives. My motivation was a fascination with the future more than with the past: without historical study, as my fellow Scot Niall Ferguson has argued elsewhere, our reference points for understanding the future are limited to either personal biography or theoretical models.

Many years ago I studied history as an undergraduate at Edinburgh University.

Realpolitik by John Bew