"One of the highlights of 2002."
– The Guardian as selected by Anthony Holden and Jon
Snow
"Among Britain's most powerful, one book has become required reading."
– Sir Michael Howard in The Guardian
"It is tempting to call Philip Bobbitt's huge magnum opus majestic. But
that is only half the truth. It is also argumentative, opinionated,
brilliant and will be very controversial, as he no doubt hopes. Not
surprising that Sir Michael Howard, Regius Professor of Modern History at
Oxford and writer of the foreword to the book, call it "one of the most
important works on international relations published during the last 50
years." It is a triumph, though a terrifying one … Bobbitt's
history and prediction is not comfortable, but it is awe-inspiring. An
alarming glimpse of our future … argumentative, opinionated,
brilliant … a triumph."
– Evening Standard
"[A] very important book … [Bobbitt] knows his stuff, but rarely
struts it: he is earnest but seldom pompous, well-informed but never
grand … He plays hardball, but with a sense of the importance of
the rules as well as muscle … Bobbitt has the knowledge and nerves
to cut the quibbles. What review could do justice to the range and
intelligence of a work so full of ideas, proposals and fears and hopes
for the future of civilization? Closely argued … chilling …
persuasive … This tome is readable for its sustained intelligence
and honesty."
– Sunday Times (London)
"I cannot praise the work too highly. It will be one of the most important
works on international relations published during the last fifty years."
– Sir Michael Howard
"It [The Shield of Achilles] is a sprawling, Texas-size work both
because its author, Philip Bobbitt, is a professor of constitutional law
at the University of Texas and because it has caught the attention of the
Texan-led administration that now holds sway in Washington, D.C."
– The Economist
"Bobbitt is not just another prophet of doom, bewailing the loss of past
certainties and warning of a coming Armageddon. The Shield of
Achilles is an audacious, massively informed analysis of the nature
of the modern state and of modern war over five hundred years. …
Much of The Shield of Achilles is devoted to demonstrating that
the modern age really has been shaped by war and law, which flies
defiantly in the face of a century of Marxist and sub-Marxist belief in
the historical force of class conflict and systems of production."
– Literary Review
"Thought-provoking … [a] wide-ranging, ambitiously conceived and
intelligently argued book … The real, practical purpose of the
book is Bobbitt's analysis of the new international environment. It is
here that he brings to bear to good effect his academic insights and
practical experience. Philip Bobbitt's future scenarios are based on an
intelligent and cautiously realistic extrapolation of current security
and political developments. We ignore them at our peril…"
– The Times Literary Supplement (TLS)
"One of the key texts at the birth of the new century."
– Philip Ziegler
"London and Oxford, Washington and Texas are his spiritual and actual
homes; and the almost Germanic structure of his argument is relieved by
his engagingly fresh English prose."
– The Guardian
"Awesome … a tour de force of historical enquiry and futuristic
speculation. All interested in the present condition of the human race
and the choices before us ought to read it."
– Glasgow Herald
"We are all about to have our way of looking at the world turned upside
down by this superb book by the American historian and former member of
the National Security Council, Philip Bobbitt."
– The Guardian
"America has a beacon to guide it through this horror. All empires need
their Macaulay and America has Philip Bobbitt whose Shield of
Achilles scans the exercise of power from ancient times to September
11 … this book could hardly have been better timed. September 11
was a clear case of 'as I was about to tell you.' Al Qaeda's global
reach, its off-shore wealth and suicidal warriors are a perfect example
of Bobbitt's new sort of war machine…"
– The Times, (London)
"This chaotic situation has led political thinkers on both sides of the
Atlantic – Philip Bobbitt in America, Robert Cooper over here
– to demand a total paradigm shift in our approach to
international order. Globalisation, they argue, has meant the end of
the territorial nation state and the advent, they argue, of
'market-states' or nation-states whose power transends territorial
boundaries. With that power goes – or should go –
responsibility for the maintenance of order among impotant and backward
'pre-modern' states, not only moral but prudential responsibility for
rescuing their populations from starvation, enforcing human rights, and
ensuring that they do not spawn bellicose dictators or provide safe
harbour for terrorist and pirates."
– Financial Times
"Europeans have not absorbed The Shield of Achilles, the key text
by Philip Bobbitt, a security intellectual and former Clinton
intelligence chief, which describes at prescient length the new
dealing-room of international relations and the brutal terms of trade
that American will dictate there as a matter of survival."
– The Guardian
"The Shield of Achilles is perhaps a unique book for it sets aside
what has until recently been the conventional wisdom of those engaged in
the study and practice of international relations … What makes
Bobbitt different from most commentators, however, is that he is
prepared to be prescriptive, to outline a strategy on which the generals
and other directors of an increasingly complex security effort might
plan … This is a bold book, a brave book and a worthy primer for
the essential study of where we go from here."
– The Times
"A blockbuster on the history and future of the modern state … I
defy you to read this and claim your understanding has not been
enriched."
– The Independent
"Remarkable … breathtaking in its range of reference, forcefully
written."
– London Review of Books
"An epochal work … A truly cataclysmic war, Bobbitt claims, is
possible in the next couple of decades and the risk of the Bomb being
used is greater now than at any time since 1945. What is really
frightening is that most of The Shield of Achilles was written
before 11 September."
– Scotland on Sunday
"A big book that asks big questions about the past, present and future
… interesting and always provocative."
– Sunday Telegraph
"Along with the history lesson, the 'scenario suites' and his policy menu
choices, Bobbitt exhibits a chronic weakness for human learning. The is
dazzling."
– Times Higher Education Supplement
