Politics : Individuals and States.

This book is entitled Politics (with a bow to Aristotle and Harold Laski) because its subject is the span of political affairs from democracy to authoritarianism to the interactions of the superpowers—a scope broader than is ordinarily considered proper for works of political science. It is not the kind of book that one researches and then writes; rather, it is the result of many years of varied reading and thinking. In a sense it was begun fifty years ago, when world war was on the horizon and a boy realized that an abundance of good minds was dedicated to natural science but there was a shortage of problem solvers in the most critical matters for humanity, the problems of political conflict.
The study of politics is less elegant than devising theorems of finite groups or grand unified theories of physics, but it is equally difficult and more frustrating. It requires weighing crucial questions for which there are no good scales and concerning which the best observers often err. Yet the deepest theories of the physical universe and the most marvelous robots will go for nothing unless the political universe can be managed. If civilization comes to grief, it will be for lack, not of scientific- technical knowledge, but of political wisdom.
Because truth in political affairs is so complex and shadowy, the journey to some sort of synthesis has been long. First came an interest in foreign countries and international affairs. Study of Soviet institutions followed when the world war showed how important the Soviet Union would be in the world order. Analysis of the Soviet system led to a comparative investigation of other highly governed huge states,