Before settling in for pleasurable summer books, read Graham Allison's "Destined for War: Can America and China escape Thucydides's Trap?" A warning label: It's going to scare the hell out of you.
It starts with the Athenian historian's chronicle of the conflict between Sparta and Athens in the fifth century B.C. as a way to tackle the larger question of whether war can be averted when an aggressive rising nation threatens a dominant power. Allison, a renowned Harvard scholar and national security expert, studied 16 such cases over the past 500 years; in 12 there was war.
For three-quarters of a century, the United States has been the dominant world power. China is now challenging that hegemony economically, politically and militarily. Both countries, with vastly different political systems, histories and values, believe in their own exceptionalism.