There are different ways state A can make state B do something that the state B doesn’t really want to do. In the extreme, state A can attack state B. But wars are messy: people die, they can get expensive, and they aren’t really good PR, so the states usually shy away from them nowadays. More commonly, they resort to economic warfare: stuff like sanctions, blockades, or tariffs.
However, history shows that wielding economic warfare properly used to be tricky, because it usually a) requires cooperation of multiple actors, b) requires a naval blockade, which is not that far from waging an actual war, c) tends to be costly not only for the targeted countries, but also the ones who start it, and d) doesn’t guarantee that the intended goals will be achieved and can even backfire. Of course, these points also apply to waging an actual war, but they did not disappear when the mode of coercion changed.
As the world became much more interconnected in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, new areas in the world economy emerged where some states hold outsized influence, as the rest of the world depends on the part of the ecosystem they control. These areas – chokepoints – then became tools which could be wielded in waging economic wars.
For example, the world economy sort of runs on the US dollar. Oil is priced in USD, it is used in nearly 90% of global foreign exchange transactions, and 70% of the foreign-currency debt is issued in dollars. Cutting a company off from the US dollar can be a death sentence.
The emergence of these global chokepoints changed the calculus of economic warfare, as some of the historical drawbacks no longer apply. It made it easier for states to act on their own, without advance buy-in from their allies (the US could just unilaterally decide to cut dollar access without first consulting Germany or the UK). In addition, a naval blockade is no longer required for the sanctions to be effective.
As the US recoiled from engaging in conventional warfare after the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns, it resorted more and more to these new tools to achieve its geopolitical goals, ranging from stopping Iran from developing the nuclear bomb, through deterring Russia from invading Ukraine, to stunting China’s attempt to catch up in advanced technologies. But as the detailed accounts of these efforts in the book show, the main historical lesson seems to hold as strong as ever: engaging in economic warfare is a fickle business, and the outcomes are usually far from guaranteed.
Below, I summarize two such episodes from the book, and then follow up with some common themes.
Case study 1: Iran (2005-2015)
When Iran restarted its uranium enrichment program in 2005 after the election of Ahmadinejad, it seemed that the US had run out of options to prevent it from developing nuclear bombs. There was already a bunch of sanctions on Iran, but they did not result in meaningful policy changes. The US imposed a trade embargo on Iran in 1995, but this didn’t stop companies from other countries from doing business there. The US then threatened these foreign companies with penalties if they invested in the Iranian energy sector, but this was not enforced in practice and served mostly to anger the foreign governments which didn’t really like the US telling their companies what is and isn’t allowed.
It looked like there was not much else for the US to do, or as Bush put it in 2004: ‘we’ve sanctioned ourselves out of influence with Iran’.
But there was a guy who decided to prove Bush wrong. Stuart Levey, Treasury’s terrorism-finance chief, was determined to craft a set of sanctions which wouldn’t require participation of other governments but would meaningfully hurt Iran’s economy. The idea was to cut off Iranian banks not only from doing business with the US (which was already the case), but from doing business in dollars (with anyone).
When any two banks transact in dollars, this payment has to briefly go through the US financial system. This is because the dollars are ultimately entries at the Fed, and only US banks can have accounts at the Fed. So the way international trade in dollars works is that the banks outside the US need to have an open account at some US bank, which settles the dollar transaction for them. Now, the 1995 embargo made it illegal for Iranian banks to hold US accounts directly, but they still could hold accounts at foreign banks (in Europe or Dubai), which in turn had US accounts, so Iran used this extra step to use the dollar.
Stuart Levey’s campaign was about persuading the foreign banks that they shouldn’t allow this, even if it was legal. The main argument was that doing business with Iran, which funds terrorist organizations and wants to build the nuclear bomb, is actually bad for their bank’s reputation. On top of that, the US may impose stricter sanctions in the future so it is actually better to stop doing business with Iran now.
Surprisingly, this mostly worked. After ~18 months of an intense campaign, almost all global banks closed their accounts with Iranian banks. However, there were some left-over banks who continued servicing the Iranian accounts (especially in Dubai), and that was all Iran needed to keep its access to the dollar. So the US then threatened it would ban any bank which dealt with a blacklisted Iranian bank from access to the dollar, which spooked even the banks in Abu Dhabi and they cut ties with Iran too. Since you basically need dollars to buy anything, this made it really difficult for Iran to buy stuff like machinery, raw materials, or medicine, leading to 40% inflation and shortages.
Still, Iran kept collecting massive amounts of revenue from oil sales, which flowed to the national bank. If the US sanctioned the central bank too, threatening the dollar access to any bank doing business with it, nobody could buy oil from Iran. But the US didn’t do this because it was scared that this would make oil all around the world – and especially in the US – more expensive, threatening a recession in the fragile post-2008 economy.
There was also a tension between the Obama administration and Congress in choosing how to pressure Iran. Congress demanded maximalist sanctions and wanted to push oil exports to zero, while the administration tried to walk the line between the sanctions and disrupting the domestic economy too much.
In the end, the compromise they settled on was to sanction the central bank, but waive the sanctions for banks in any country that “significantly reduced” oil purchases from Iran every 6 months. In other words, other countries couldn’t buy Iranian oil unless they kept reducing the volume. The US managed to persuade even China and India to reduce their Iranian imports. With the EU imposing a full-blown oil embargo of its own, the Iranian exports dropped by 40% in 2012. On top of this, the US forced the foreign banks to create special escrow accounts for the money used to buy the Iranian oil, and Iran could use these funds only for non-sanctioned items like food or medicine.
These sanctions combined were disastrous for Iran’s economy. The rial lost its value, inflation soared, almost every third young Iranian was unemployed. Rouhani, a little-known candidate who was the first one to speak against the sanctions, won in a landslide. The US intensified the negotiations with Iran (which never completely stopped) and this resulted in an ‘Iranian deal’ (JCPOA) in 2015, which made Iran give up most of its enriched uranium, dismantle centrifuges, and accept inspections in return for sanctions relief.
The quest which looked nigh impossible in 2004 was at last achieved: the US ratcheted up the economic pressure enough to put Iran’s nuclear aspirations on hold.
Case study 2: Russia (2021-2024)
In Fall 2021, US agencies concluded that Putin was preparing for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This gave the West the opportunity to prepare the sanctions in advance and to try to deter Russia from the war. Together with the EU, they created a so-called ‘Day Zero’ package (to be unleashed on the day the invasion started), which included cutting off Russia’s second largest bank from the dollar, banning technology exports, and sanctioning oligarchs close to Putin.
Most notably, the package did not include any sanctions on the energy sector. The EU and the US were in agreement on this point: the EU didn’t want to lose one third of its oil imports coming from Russia, and the US had no interest in sending the oil prices higher as inflation neared a 40-year high after the rebound in demand after COVID lockdowns.
Alas, the threat of the sanctions and last-minute diplomacy efforts didn’t prevent the invasion. On 21st February, Russian troops moved into the Donetsk/Luhansk region. The West held back, responding with limited sanctions, as it wasn’t clear if this was the event which should trigger the full package. But three days later, as the missiles hit Kyiv and the Russian tanks started to roll into Ukraine, it was apparent that a full-scale invasion was underway and the Day Zero sanctions were triggered that same day.
But as the world, and especially European countries, watched the troops push toward the Ukrainian capital, the Day Zero sanctions seemed painfully inadequate. In a matter of days, the sanctions were escalated in ways which were considered off the table in the months leading to the invasion: the western allies cut Russia from SWIFT, the messaging system used by banks, and froze its foreign reserves in dollars and euros. The latter move was especially painful for Russia, as its central bank had held a disproportionate share of its reserves in euros, counting on Europe’s unwillingness to impose hard sanctions.
All these measures, as painful as they were, had one huge gap: the one billion dollars Russia was raking in each day from its oil sales. The oil price at 7-year highs was driving Russia’s profits even higher. Even winding down Russia’s exports could send the oil price and the US inflation further still, let alone if the exports were fully banned. But what if Russia kept selling all the oil, but would have to do it at a lower price?
In April, the US floated the idea of imposing a price cap on the Russian oil by sanctioning the importer companies: if any company bought the oil from Russia above the cap, it would lose access to the dollar. If the companies complied, Russia would have to sell its oil below the cap. Moreover, Russia was also dependent on European services for maritime insurance (95% of the world’s tanker fleet was insured by companies under a single UK association) and shipping, so the US could threaten to sanction these as well, if the involved oil was sold above the price cap. But this idea was then set aside as the US didn’t want to risk fighting with the European allies, which usually frowned upon US-imposed secondary sanctions on their companies.
Instead, it was the EU who forced the US to move. In May, von der Leyen announced an embargo on the Russian oil, but also the ban on the European services used by the Russian oil exporters. The latter move was unexpected even by the US, who tried to make the EU reconsider, afraid of cutting the 2nd largest oil exporter from the market. But the EU had made up its mind, so the US pivoted to try to soften the move by tying it to the price cap idea, and the deal was struck that Russia could still use the services, but only if the oil was sold under the price cap.
But where should the cap be set? With that many countries involved, this wasn’t easy. The Baltic countries with Poland (and Zelenskyy) pushed for a price close to $30, approaching the production cost. On the other end, the countries heavily involved in the shipping (Greece, Cyprus, Malta) pushed for the cap above $70, close to the market price of $80 at the time. The US didn’t want to set the cap so low that Russia would stop exporting oil – even if it was high enough to still make profit on the sales, Russia could see the low cap as an insult and stop selling. The final number was settled 2 days before the ban went into effect, following a US official calling Warsaw, and was set at $60.
By the middle of 2023, the Russian oil was trading at ~$30 lower than Brent, and its revenue was down ~50% compared to the previous year. The oil crisis was averted, and the cap served its purpose of decreasing Russia’s oil revenue.
The Russia sanctions crafted in 2021 (Day Zero) fell short of their main goal of deterring the invasion of Ukraine. The response of the western world, especially the EU, seemed to surprise the Russians, who counted on the EU’s complacency and reliance on the energy imports, partly because of the EU’s tepid response after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The sanctions are hurting the Russian economy, but they have yet to tip the scales of the war, which is now in its 4th year and has caused some 400,000 deaths.
Synthesis
There are several themes or observations from the book which were particularly interesting to me.
Mainly, what stood out was how complex the world of geopolitics and diplomacy is. States have different interests. Inside each state, there are different companies or political factions or other groups pushing for different things. There are many theaters of the geopolitical struggle, and the priorities in some need to be traded for those in others. The US wants to prevent Russia from attacking Ukraine but also wants to keep the Russian oil flowing so domestic prices don’t rise and also doesn’t want to push Russia closer to China: something has to give.
The situation is in constant flux and can change quickly. The EU’s months-long reluctance to impose harder sanctions on Russia in 2014 was broken after MH17 was shot down over Donbas, killing all 298 aboard, 193 of them Dutch. The moves which were off the table can become table stakes in a matter of days, like freezing Russia’s central bank’s assets days after the start of the Ukrainian invasion.
Managing all this requires countless meetings, talks, negotiations. This is not surprising, but I have a better appreciation for this than I had before.
Given all this, it is usually hard to predict with certainty the effect of pulling various sanctions levers. For example, the Iranian sanctions which led to the election of a reformist candidate and in turn to the nuclear deal can now be viewed as successful. But what if he hadn’t spoken up against sanctions in one TV debate, which propelled him to victory? One of the other favorites was a hardline nuclear negotiator. If he had won, the deal would have been far from inevitable.
As one would expect, playing on the geopolitical stage gets easier for states which hold more chokepoints compared to their adversaries and are able to hurt them more than they can retaliate – of course, the credible threat of this is often just as good as doing it. More chokepoints means there’s more moves available. But available moves don’t translate into playing the right moves automatically. Wielding this power effectively is another necessary step, one which requires a good deal of skill and foresight.
Review
I enjoyed this book a lot. The selected episodes were all still very relevant, with Russia’s war still ongoing, and the escalation of the US-Israel/Iran conflict over the last two years. (I would love to have a full chapter devoted to the geopolitics of the US/China race to advanced AI, though the book touches on this in the last chapter.)
The details of the episodes are very readable, and I was quite surprised how many details and how much information about various meetings or internal struggles were already available. But the main appeal of the book is how it’s able to weave the central narrative – economic warfare and the chokepoints involved – throughout the various episodes it recounts. It lays out the dots well, and does a great job of connecting them. And I think that it’s this connecting of the dots which sets the great history books apart from the merely good ones.
[Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare by Edward Fishman (2025).]
There are different ways state A can make state B do something that the state B doesn’t really want to do. In the extreme, state A can attack state B. But wars are messy: people die, they can get expensive, and they aren’t really good PR, so the states usually shy away from them nowadays. More commonly, they resort to economic warfare: stuff like sanctions, blockades, or tariffs.
However, history shows that wielding economic warfare properly used to be tricky, because it usually a) requires cooperation of multiple actors, b) requires a naval blockade, which is not that far from waging an actual war, c) tends to be costly not only for the targeted countries, but also the ones who start it, and d) doesn’t guarantee that the intended goals will be achieved and can even backfire. Of course, these points also apply to waging an actual war, but they did not disappear when the mode of coercion changed.
As the world became much more interconnected in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, new areas in the world economy emerged where some states hold outsized influence, as the rest of the world depends on the part of the ecosystem they control. These areas – chokepoints – then became tools which could be wielded in waging economic wars.
For example, the world economy sort of runs on the US dollar. Oil is priced in USD, it is used in nearly 90% of global foreign exchange transactions, and 70% of the foreign-currency debt is issued in dollars. Cutting a company off from the US dollar can be a death sentence.
The emergence of these global chokepoints changed the calculus of economic warfare, as some of the historical drawbacks no longer apply. It made it easier for states to act on their own, without advance buy-in from their allies (the US could just unilaterally decide to cut dollar access without first consulting Germany or the UK). In addition, a naval blockade is no longer required for the sanctions to be effective.
As the US recoiled from engaging in conventional warfare after the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns, it resorted more and more to these new tools to achieve its geopolitical goals, ranging from stopping Iran from developing the nuclear bomb, through deterring Russia from invading Ukraine, to stunting China’s attempt to catch up in advanced technologies. But as the detailed accounts of these efforts in the book show, the main historical lesson seems to hold as strong as ever: engaging in economic warfare is a fickle business, and the outcomes are usually far from guaranteed.
Below, I summarize two such episodes from the book, and then follow up with some common themes.
Case study 1: Iran (2005-2015)
When Iran restarted its uranium enrichment program in 2005 after the election of Ahmadinejad, it seemed that the US had run out of options to prevent it from developing nuclear bombs. There was already a bunch of sanctions on Iran, but they did not result in meaningful policy changes. The US imposed a trade embargo on Iran in 1995, but this didn’t stop companies from other countries from doing business there. The US then threatened these foreign companies with penalties if they invested in the Iranian energy sector, but this was not enforced in practice and served mostly to anger the foreign governments which didn’t really like the US telling their companies what is and isn’t allowed.
It looked like there was not much else for the US to do, or as Bush put it in 2004: ‘we’ve sanctioned ourselves out of influence with Iran’.
But there was a guy who decided to prove Bush wrong. Stuart Levey, Treasury’s terrorism-finance chief, was determined to craft a set of sanctions which wouldn’t require participation of other governments but would meaningfully hurt Iran’s economy. The idea was to cut off Iranian banks not only from doing business with the US (which was already the case), but from doing business in dollars (with anyone).
When any two banks transact in dollars, this payment has to briefly go through the US financial system. This is because the dollars are ultimately entries at the Fed, and only US banks can have accounts at the Fed. So the way international trade in dollars works is that the banks outside the US need to have an open account at some US bank, which settles the dollar transaction for them. Now, the 1995 embargo made it illegal for Iranian banks to hold US accounts directly, but they still could hold accounts at foreign banks (in Europe or Dubai), which in turn had US accounts, so Iran used this extra step to use the dollar.
Stuart Levey’s campaign was about persuading the foreign banks that they shouldn’t allow this, even if it was legal. The main argument was that doing business with Iran, which funds terrorist organizations and wants to build the nuclear bomb, is actually bad for their bank’s reputation. On top of that, the US may impose stricter sanctions in the future so it is actually better to stop doing business with Iran now.
Surprisingly, this mostly worked. After ~18 months of an intense campaign, almost all global banks closed their accounts with Iranian banks. However, there were some left-over banks who continued servicing the Iranian accounts (especially in Dubai), and that was all Iran needed to keep its access to the dollar. So the US then threatened it would ban any bank which dealt with a blacklisted Iranian bank from access to the dollar, which spooked even the banks in Abu Dhabi and they cut ties with Iran too. Since you basically need dollars to buy anything, this made it really difficult for Iran to buy stuff like machinery, raw materials, or medicine, leading to 40% inflation and shortages.
Still, Iran kept collecting massive amounts of revenue from oil sales, which flowed to the national bank. If the US sanctioned the central bank too, threatening the dollar access to any bank doing business with it, nobody could buy oil from Iran. But the US didn’t do this because it was scared that this would make oil all around the world – and especially in the US – more expensive, threatening a recession in the fragile post-2008 economy.
There was also a tension between the Obama administration and Congress in choosing how to pressure Iran. Congress demanded maximalist sanctions and wanted to push oil exports to zero, while the administration tried to walk the line between the sanctions and disrupting the domestic economy too much.
In the end, the compromise they settled on was to sanction the central bank, but waive the sanctions for banks in any country that “significantly reduced” oil purchases from Iran every 6 months. In other words, other countries couldn’t buy Iranian oil unless they kept reducing the volume. The US managed to persuade even China and India to reduce their Iranian imports. With the EU imposing a full-blown oil embargo of its own, the Iranian exports dropped by 40% in 2012. On top of this, the US forced the foreign banks to create special escrow accounts for the money used to buy the Iranian oil, and Iran could use these funds only for non-sanctioned items like food or medicine.
These sanctions combined were disastrous for Iran’s economy. The rial lost its value, inflation soared, almost every third young Iranian was unemployed. Rouhani, a little-known candidate who was the first one to speak against the sanctions, won in a landslide. The US intensified the negotiations with Iran (which never completely stopped) and this resulted in an ‘Iranian deal’ (JCPOA) in 2015, which made Iran give up most of its enriched uranium, dismantle centrifuges, and accept inspections in return for sanctions relief.
The quest which looked nigh impossible in 2004 was at last achieved: the US ratcheted up the economic pressure enough to put Iran’s nuclear aspirations on hold.
Case study 2: Russia (2021-2024)
In Fall 2021, US agencies concluded that Putin was preparing for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This gave the West the opportunity to prepare the sanctions in advance and to try to deter Russia from the war. Together with the EU, they created a so-called ‘Day Zero’ package (to be unleashed on the day the invasion started), which included cutting off Russia’s second largest bank from the dollar, banning technology exports, and sanctioning oligarchs close to Putin.
Most notably, the package did not include any sanctions on the energy sector. The EU and the US were in agreement on this point: the EU didn’t want to lose one third of its oil imports coming from Russia, and the US had no interest in sending the oil prices higher as inflation neared a 40-year high after the rebound in demand after COVID lockdowns.
Alas, the threat of the sanctions and last-minute diplomacy efforts didn’t prevent the invasion. On 21st February, Russian troops moved into the Donetsk/Luhansk region. The West held back, responding with limited sanctions, as it wasn’t clear if this was the event which should trigger the full package. But three days later, as the missiles hit Kyiv and the Russian tanks started to roll into Ukraine, it was apparent that a full-scale invasion was underway and the Day Zero sanctions were triggered that same day.
But as the world, and especially European countries, watched the troops push toward the Ukrainian capital, the Day Zero sanctions seemed painfully inadequate. In a matter of days, the sanctions were escalated in ways which were considered off the table in the months leading to the invasion: the western allies cut Russia from SWIFT, the messaging system used by banks, and froze its foreign reserves in dollars and euros. The latter move was especially painful for Russia, as its central bank had held a disproportionate share of its reserves in euros, counting on Europe’s unwillingness to impose hard sanctions.
All these measures, as painful as they were, had one huge gap: the one billion dollars Russia was raking in each day from its oil sales. The oil price at 7-year highs was driving Russia’s profits even higher. Even winding down Russia’s exports could send the oil price and the US inflation further still, let alone if the exports were fully banned. But what if Russia kept selling all the oil, but would have to do it at a lower price?
In April, the US floated the idea of imposing a price cap on the Russian oil by sanctioning the importer companies: if any company bought the oil from Russia above the cap, it would lose access to the dollar. If the companies complied, Russia would have to sell its oil below the cap. Moreover, Russia was also dependent on European services for maritime insurance (95% of the world’s tanker fleet was insured by companies under a single UK association) and shipping, so the US could threaten to sanction these as well, if the involved oil was sold above the price cap. But this idea was then set aside as the US didn’t want to risk fighting with the European allies, which usually frowned upon US-imposed secondary sanctions on their companies.
Instead, it was the EU who forced the US to move. In May, von der Leyen announced an embargo on the Russian oil, but also the ban on the European services used by the Russian oil exporters. The latter move was unexpected even by the US, who tried to make the EU reconsider, afraid of cutting the 2nd largest oil exporter from the market. But the EU had made up its mind, so the US pivoted to try to soften the move by tying it to the price cap idea, and the deal was struck that Russia could still use the services, but only if the oil was sold under the price cap.
But where should the cap be set? With that many countries involved, this wasn’t easy. The Baltic countries with Poland (and Zelenskyy) pushed for a price close to $30, approaching the production cost. On the other end, the countries heavily involved in the shipping (Greece, Cyprus, Malta) pushed for the cap above $70, close to the market price of $80 at the time. The US didn’t want to set the cap so low that Russia would stop exporting oil – even if it was high enough to still make profit on the sales, Russia could see the low cap as an insult and stop selling. The final number was settled 2 days before the ban went into effect, following a US official calling Warsaw, and was set at $60.
By the middle of 2023, the Russian oil was trading at ~$30 lower than Brent, and its revenue was down ~50% compared to the previous year. The oil crisis was averted, and the cap served its purpose of decreasing Russia’s oil revenue.
The Russia sanctions crafted in 2021 (Day Zero) fell short of their main goal of deterring the invasion of Ukraine. The response of the western world, especially the EU, seemed to surprise the Russians, who counted on the EU’s complacency and reliance on the energy imports, partly because of the EU’s tepid response after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The sanctions are hurting the Russian economy, but they have yet to tip the scales of the war, which is now in its 4th year and has caused some 400,000 deaths.
Synthesis
There are several themes or observations from the book which were particularly interesting to me.
Mainly, what stood out was how complex the world of geopolitics and diplomacy is. States have different interests. Inside each state, there are different companies or political factions or other groups pushing for different things. There are many theaters of the geopolitical struggle, and the priorities in some need to be traded for those in others. The US wants to prevent Russia from attacking Ukraine but also wants to keep the Russian oil flowing so domestic prices don’t rise and also doesn’t want to push Russia closer to China: something has to give.
The situation is in constant flux and can change quickly. The EU’s months-long reluctance to impose harder sanctions on Russia in 2014 was broken after MH17 was shot down over Donbas, killing all 298 aboard, 193 of them Dutch. The moves which were off the table can become table stakes in a matter of days, like freezing Russia’s central bank’s assets days after the start of the Ukrainian invasion.
Managing all this requires countless meetings, talks, negotiations. This is not surprising, but I have a better appreciation for this than I had before.
Given all this, it is usually hard to predict with certainty the effect of pulling various sanctions levers. For example, the Iranian sanctions which led to the election of a reformist candidate and in turn to the nuclear deal can now be viewed as successful. But what if he hadn’t spoken up against sanctions in one TV debate, which propelled him to victory? One of the other favorites was a hardline nuclear negotiator. If he had won, the deal would have been far from inevitable.
As one would expect, playing on the geopolitical stage gets easier for states which hold more chokepoints compared to their adversaries and are able to hurt them more than they can retaliate – of course, the credible threat of this is often just as good as doing it. More chokepoints means there’s more moves available. But available moves don’t translate into playing the right moves automatically. Wielding this power effectively is another necessary step, one which requires a good deal of skill and foresight.
Review
I enjoyed this book a lot. The selected episodes were all still very relevant, with Russia’s war still ongoing, and the escalation of the US-Israel/Iran conflict over the last two years. (I would love to have a full chapter devoted to the geopolitics of the US/China race to advanced AI, though the book touches on this in the last chapter.)
The details of the episodes are very readable, and I was quite surprised how many details and how much information about various meetings or internal struggles were already available. But the main appeal of the book is how it’s able to weave the central narrative – economic warfare and the chokepoints involved – throughout the various episodes it recounts. It lays out the dots well, and does a great job of connecting them. And I think that it’s this connecting of the dots which sets the great history books apart from the merely good ones.