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Dec 4, 2025
Thinking Historically
A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy
Summary
In his timely, thought-provoking book Thinking Historically: A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy (Yale UP, 2025), Francis Gavin makes a powerful case for why a genuine historical sensibility, rooted in curiosity, humility, and discernment, is not just an academic virtue but a critical tool for decision-makers. Rather than mining the past for tidy analogies, he argues that history should be practiced as a way of thinking: it complicates our assumptions, reveals the unexpected, and helps us understand the world, ultimately making it easier to achieve a clarity of perspective. By weaving together lessons from statecraft and strategy, Gavin shows how thinking historically equips leaders to navigate complexity, confront uncertainty, and make wiser choices in a world that all too often misuses or neglects the wisdom of the past. The book is a major contribution to the ongoing conversation about the impact that history (and the humanities) can make outside of academia. Even more importantly, Thinking Historically also functions as a practical guide to historically-grounded decision-making. We've been waiting for this book for a long time. Check out the episode if you want to learn about the value of history in decision-making, reflect on how teaching history to policymakers is like teaching sex education to teenagers, hear about how Ben Bernanke used history to make impactful economic decisions in 2008-2010, and consider what historians can learn from nuclear physicists. Not to be missed!
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Patryk Babiracki
Patryk Babiracki is a historian, researcher and writer; professor & MA student advisor at the University of Texas at Arlington. PhD from Johns Hopkins. Promoter of #AppliedHistory: using historical concepts, frameworks, and methodologies to solve real-world organizational problems.
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