Repetitive strain.Games Without Rules: the Often Interrupted History of Afghanistan Tamim Ansary Public Affairs, 416pp, £17.99 Return of a King: the Battle for Afghanistan William Dalrymple Bloomsbury, 608pp, £25 In The March of Folly, her analysis of unforced error in statecraft through the ages, the American historian Barbara Tuchman tried to answer the question that lies at the heart of both these books: why, when faced with a clear choice between the self-evidently catastrophic and the merely unpalatable, do we so often opt for the former? In style and substance, these ... Read More