Crows and Owls

A study of war, peace, and the enemy within. The crows and the owls are hereditary foes, and the owls hold the advantage of night. The crows' wisest minister has himself plucked and left as an apparent traitor, so that the owls take him in — and from inside their stronghold he engineers their ruin. The book weighs the six strategies of statecraft — peace, war, marching, halting, alliance, duplicity — and the peril of trusting a defector too readily.