ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters in this book. The book demonstrates that interaction of the three ingredients accounts for a large share of social problems and failures in politics and business but, somewhat paradoxically, can also help to overcome some of the problems that result from applying one or two of them in isolation. It discusses that the issue captured by Sergio Leone's truel is far more general than The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (GBU) suggests. Interestingly, Kilgour and Brams do not cite GBU, even when they give examples of truels referring to movies and competing television networks. The truel in GBU could be a perfect illustration of how a secret could map a second-mover advantage into a first-mover advantage. The book focuses on the strategic aspect of time or, more generally, time defined by history.
