AP Photo

As President Kennedy pondered the risks of accidental war in the nuclear age -- a nightmare he would confront head on in the Cuban missile crisis -- he asked his senior advisors to read Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August," a narrative tracing the chain of events that led to World War I.

Today, President Obama is also reflecting on history's lessons, asking his advisors to study the past as they help him chart America's future course in Afghanistan. Among the "required reading" for the Obama team, it has been reported, is my book, "Lessons in Disaster," which examines how one of the architects of the Vietnam War, McGeorge Bundy, came to renounce America's entanglement in that tragic conflict and struggled to draw insight from it "to help us do better in the world...