On page 14 of his book Grand Strategies Charles Hill introduces Michel Eyquem de Montaigne to invoke his condemnation of envoys who parse the truth in reporting back to their principals. The guilty party in this case is wily Odysseus negotiating with furious Achilles on behalf of haughty Agamemnon: Odysseus fails to tell Achilles that a public display of submission is part of the deal (Achilles might have killed him on the spot). Although Hill later describes Montaigne as “one of the great stylists in French literature (citing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “cut these words and they would bleed”), and that is a literature that certainly privileges style, Hill unaccountably cites Montaigne in English: “A Tricke of Certaine Ambassadors.” Moreover, this looks like the very first translation, published while Shakespeare still lived, by John (Giovanni) Florio, the London-born Italianist, litterateur and edgy thinker, whose French was imperfect. Hill could at least have cited a later translation.

Yes, this quibble is more than a little pedantic, but I have a very good reason for that in reviewing this most unconventional book, a truly masterful synthesis of “Literature, Statecraft and World Order”, in the words of the subtitle. Hill has drawn from a career in diplomacy, a thorough grounding in classical and modern philosophy and a rich appreciation of great literature to produce a kaleidoscopic masterpiece that illuminates all it surveys. That is why whoever reviews this book with an intention to criticize must either nurse some interagency grudge left over from the author’s distinguished diplomatic career, or else load up with the grapeshot of minutiae to throw against the exuberant enthusiasm generated by page after page of inspired writing.

Adult reviewers are not supposed to gush like teenage fans of the rock star du jour, I know. But it is not even over the top to evoke de Montaigne to explain what Grand Strategies is really about. It is such a surprising book that first impressions are bound to mislead. Hill puts before the reader a prefatory list of works cited, one containing every book central to the Western canon from Homer onward, plus a few more. This seems to presage a book that will mimic an anthology, that most dubious of genres, which more often substitutes for than encourages proper reading. But Grand Strategies resembles an anthology no more than a finely aged single-malt Scotch whisky resembles the vat of wet barley from which it started. Hill does not string together extracts but instead distills truly arresting insights from texts more briefly cited than quoted at length. His purpose is to address the...