This is the classic work upon which modern-day game theory is based. What began as a modest proposal that a mathematician and an economist write a short paper together blossomed, when Princeton University Press published Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. In it, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern conceived a groundbreaking mathematical theory of economic and social organization, based on a theory of games of strategy. Not only would this revolutionize economics, but the entirely new field of scientific inquiry it yielded--game theory--has since been widely used to analyze a host of real-world phenomena from arms races to optimal policy choices of presidential candidates, from vaccination policy to major league baseball salary negotiations. And it is today established throughout both the social sciences and a wide range of other sciences.

A great deal has been written about tactical play in the game of Diplomacy, but hardly anything on the best approaches to the negotiation side of the game. And yet it is the person-to-person interactions that give the game its distinctive character and which create the most interesting challenges. How do you form strong alliances? How can you tell if an ally is about to stab? Are there techniques you can use to break up the strong alliance of your opponents? In the Art of Correspondence in the Game of Diplomacy, Conor Kostick discusses these issues and many more. Through an in-depth analysis of the full correspondence of two classic games and through dozens of other examples, he offers a unique insight into what makes for effective negotiation in the game. This highly original contribution to the study of the game of Diplomacy is for readers who wish to improve their own play or who will enjoy witnessing the normally secret workings of the game, as players steer towards victory or disaster. Conor Kostick is an award winning military historian and novelist. He was an outright winner of Manorcon, one of Diplomacy's Grand Prix tournaments, and he was a member of the Irish Diplomacy team that won the world correspondence team championship in 2012.