John Boyd was a genius, but he was not much of writer, preferring instead to spread his ideas through long, intensive briefings (supposedly he delivered his lectures on the OODA loop and modern strategy about 1500 times over the course of two decades.) Frans Osinga has performed an invaluable service rendering his ideas into a single coherent narrative that follows the intellectual origins of Boyd's theory through their development (including exact quotes of Boyd's key points) and their influence and relevance today.

Boyd recognized the task of strategy as organizational learning to preserve one's own freedom of action while denying that same freedom to an adversary. The battlefield is not just a time and place, it is also moral and intellectual, and the greatest victories come from scattering and paralyzing an enemy by maximizing his internal 'friction' rather than mass firepower or attrition. Osinga clearly demonstrates that there is for more to Boyd that "getting inside the bad guys' OODA loops."

The problem with this book (and the reason why it loses a star) lies with Boyd himself. For all his brilliance, he was on the obscure side. He was a post-modern strategist, a zen engineer, and he produced a mindset rather than maxims. Boydian perspectives can be used to justify nonsense as well as sound action. But for all their difficulty and amorphous form, Boyd remains the best guide to strategic thinking in the 21st century. Read this book, then despair.