Roman History books recommendations.

[Incongruous]

The question is whether the Romans had any concept of Grand strategy at all. This is questionable.

I have only just begun reading it, but this struck me as a fairly odd point to make, the Romans clearly had a grasp of an Empire wide strategy and I do not think we should be caught up in vague terminology.

In his preface, Luttwak further makes a number of claims that a historian must find issue with. There is the unproven assertion that Roman tactics were not superior to those of the enemy, the assumption that the imperial Roman soldier was not noted for his élan and finally that Roman weapons were not regularly superior to those of the enemy. All those claims are questionable at best, and since Luttwak does not provide any evidence for them, it would be best to discount them

Now, Roman tactics were oft not superior to those of their enemies, but throughout history this has been offset by great discipline. Elán, hmm well I have never counted the Romans to be highly noted for the characteristic. Roman weapons we not regularly superior to their enemies, well I find no issue with that but it is not central to the book and I find it ammusing that the author does not provide any of his own archeological sources to refute Luttwak. Simply asserting that we should discount them, is this is the way academic historians argue, I am dissapointed.

the Roman empire expanded aggressively in the east and consolidated internal control of that territory.[29]

Really? I know that is campaigned very agressively in the east, but I do not think its rate of expansion matched the intesity of its armed conflict.
I also thought that Hadrian pulled back from Mesopotamia because such a position was impossible to defend? If the Empire was stretched dangerously thin along the Rhine and the Danube in times of civil war and the removal of Legions from the region, how could the Empire have afforded to expand that far into the east and not seriously compromise its defense? Where would the Legions come from?